RESEARCH_TIMELINE
The Science of Relational Aggression: Exclusion and Gossip Are Real Aggression
If you've ever been frozen out of a group chat, talked about behind your back, or 'forgotten' from an invite list, your self-talk probably split two ways: 'it's just drama, get over it' or 'they did it because something's wrong with me.' The research says both scripts are wrong. Since 1995, psychology has had a name for harm done through relationships — relational aggression — and the data show it's real aggression, it doesn't stop after school, it runs through workplaces and adult friend groups, and the brain processes being excluded with some of the same circuitry as physical pain. Here's what fifty years of exclusion science actually found.
How the science changed · 1995–2015
- 1995
Nicki Crick and Jennifer Grotpeter publish 'Relational Aggression, Gender, and Social-Psychological Adjustment' in Child Development, naming relational aggression — harming others through damage to relationships, like exclusion and rumor-spreading — and showing its targets are more rejected, lonelier, and more depressed than other children. ↗
- 1999
Werner and Crick take the construct into adulthood with a college sample in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: relational aggression is common among young adults, and relationally aggressive men are just as likely as women to show adjustment difficulties. ↗
- 2003
Eisenberger, Lieberman and Williams publish 'Does Rejection Hurt?' in Science: in an fMRI ball-tossing game, being excluded activates the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex — a region tied to the distress of physical pain — and activity tracks how distressed the excluded person feels. ↗
- 2010
Murray-Close, Ostrov, Nelson, Crick and Coccaro validate an adult self-report measure of relational aggression in 1,387 adults: reactive relational aggression — lashing out through relationships when provoked — is uniquely tied to hostile attribution biases and distress over ambiguous relational slights. ↗
- 2010
Ostrov and Godleski propose an integrated gender-linked model of aggression in Psychological Review: children tend to use the form of aggression consistent with their gender schemas — which explains average differences in form without making relational aggression a 'girl thing'. ↗
- 2015
O'Reilly, Robinson, Berdahl and Banki bring exclusion science to the workplace in Organization Science: employees rate ostracism as more socially acceptable and less harmful than harassment — yet in the data it is more damaging to belonging and well-being, and it (not harassment) predicts actual turnover three years later. ↗