Pupillary Reactivity to Social Exclusion: A Window into the Mechanism behind Social Exclusion Detection

Social exclusion causes distress. However, physiological mechanisms behind such distress responses are unclear. We investigated whether pupil dilation, an automatic physiological response, occurs when excluded by humans versus computers. Pupil dilation increased after exclusion by both humans and computers, suggesting fast-acting sensitivity to exclusion may be an evolutionarily ingrained tendency.