ABSTRACT
A lmost everyone has had the experience of feeling socially excluded:being alone on a Saturday night and feeling lonely; being rejected bypeers, perhaps by means of cruel teasing; experiencing a divorce or the breakup of a romantic relationship; or having a friend cancel a social occasion because she found something more interesting to do. Because being with people is such a fundamental human need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), these experiences can have a strong impact.
