Kipling Williams, Social Psychologist, Purdue University
“Some people talk about rejection and social exclusion as like a punch in the gut or they get a headache or they’re short of breath and they actually feel, physically feel, the loss of a connection."
Amanda Harrist, Child Development, Oklahoma State University
"If you’re not happy at school, if you don’t have friends, if people mistreat you, research shows that you come to not like school. It’s not a place you want to be and so, learning is impacted."
Naomi Eisenberger, Social Neuroscientist, UCLA
“I think even though we know that experiences like social rejection can be painful, I kind of thought that the experiential state was more metaphorical. I didn’t really think that the brain would look like it’s in physical pain when people are being left out.â€
Vivian Paley, Educator and Author of You Can’t Say You Can’t Play
"Rejection is being made into an outcast in the classroom—by one child or many children, by a teacher, by other parents. It's being made into an outsider."
Matthew Lieberman, Social Neuroscientist, UCLA
“I think that it’s a profoundly different creature we’re talking about when we think of a creature that primarily is searching for food, water and shelter compared to a creature that’s primarily searching for social connection.â€
James Garbarino, Author and Senior Faculty Fellow, Loyola University
“All of these kids, particularly evident to me looking back on them are these social forms of rejection—exclusion because of ethnicity, and social class, and geographic group that you come from."
Dr. Herbert E. Thomas, former resident Psychiatrist, Western Penitentiary Prison
“When a person has pain from experiencing rejection, they get a great deal of tension and that can be released, but the pain is not released. The tension related to the pain is often released in violence.â€
Hunter Hurst, Founder, National Center for Juvenile Justice
“If you talk to a lot of the public today about bullying, they will say well, that’s part of growing up. That is learning to swim in the sea of humanity. That’s real. That’s life. You must be able to cope with that. And that too is true but you get extreme forms of rejection and when they meet vulnerable people you have disastrous results. “
Bill and Jan Mohat, Parents of Eric Mohat, Victim of Bullycide
“Bullying takes many forms, from teasing to assult and everything in between. But the purpose of it is to isolate somebody and push them out of the group so that somebody else can be advanced in social status. But it is rejection and isolation. That is the foundation of it, no matter how it takes shape. “
Best quote at Pop!Tech 2011
“We need to be tough on ideas, and gentle on people.”  —from Milenko Matanovic, who founded the Pomegranate Center , with the idea that every person should have the chance to feel connected… Read More
Rejection is “Fashionable”
While it’s not the first study to connect rejection to physical pain, the latest MRI rejection study is covered in a recent article in the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times… Read More
Rejection and Ostracism in the News
Our featured expert Kipling Williams can be heard this week on BBC radio’s “All in the Mind” program. Â He discusses the science of ostracism as measured through the computer game Cyberball.… Read More