Reaching out by changing what's within: Social exclusion increases self-concept malleability

•Socially excluded people alter the self to gain social connection.•Excluded people expanded their self-concept to incorporate new attributes.•The attributes were characteristic of a novel social target, but not themselves.•This effect was limited to targets that were construed as potential friends.•It occurred regardless of whether the potential friend was aware of the change.

People have a fundamental need to belong that, when thwarted, can affect cognition and behavior in ways designed to regain social connection. Because one of the best predictors of social connection is similarity, the current investigation tests the self-malleability hypothesis, which predicts social exclusion encourages people to modify their self-concepts to increase similarity to others, presumably in pursuit of renewed affiliation. Five studies supported the self-malleability hypothesis. Excluded people expanded their self-concept to incorporate new attributes characteristic of a novel social target but which they did not originally perceive as characteristic of themselves (Study 1). This effect was limited to targets that were construed as potential friends (Study 2) and occurred regardless of whether the potential friend was aware of the change (Study 3). Additionally, after recalling an exclusion experience, people modified even existing self-views to increase similarity to a potential friend (Studies 4a and 4b). Thus, socially excluded people alter the self to gain social connection.