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news-press.com Getting the cold shoulder Many people recognize bullying — inflicting abuse physically and verbally, often through loud taunting, teasing and put-downs. But a quiet form of abuse that often goes unnoticed — and unpunished — can damage the health of its victims just as bullying does. It is ostracism, the act of excluding or ignoring a person by giving them the silent treatment or cold shoulder. "The silent treatment can be as profound as getting beaten up," says Fort Myers psychotherapist Dr. Jeanette Bevilacqua. Ostracism happens in myriad ways, she says. It's aimed at overweight people and alcoholics. It worries gay people coming out of the closet. It can even rear its head when people move to Southwest Florida, she says. "Newcomers might come in with a feeling that the locals are backwoods people (because) they don't have a Northern mentality," she says. "It's prejudice." As children and adults displaced by Hurricane Katrina enter new schools, jobs and communities, the consequences of ignoring people are more relevant than ever. Excluding people from relationships at home, work or school — acting as if they don't exist — is "one of the most powerful forms of social punishment," according to Kipling Williams, a Purdue University psychology professor and author of a book on the subject. "You can get away with it, too," he says. "If people are physically or verbally abusive, they can be punished. But it's hard to punish someone for not making eye contact or ignoring another person. If confronted, the person can easily deny the accusation." Sometimes ostracism is unintentional, Williams says. Temporary employees report they are frequently ostracized, his research shows. He also says ostracism might be more potent than ever because many people have smaller families to fall back on or experience less social contact because they stay at home more, belong to fewer groups and do many tasks by computer. "Rather than going shopping with friends, they may order over the Internet," Williams observed. Psychotherapist Bevilacqua calls it the basic stuff of mental health. "A lot has to do with how intact and how secure the personality is," she says. "If you can see it as somebody else's stupidity or lack of compassion, you can distance yourself from it." If not, a person feels shame, which can lead to anxiety, depression, destructive bingeing or even suicide, she says. Williams has extensively interviewed people who have experienced ostracism, studied diaries and conducted tests in which subjects are the unsuspecting targets of exclusion. When a person is ostracized, a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex — which detects pain — is activated, his studies have found. In as little as four minutes, the silent treatment can make a person feel sad or angry and reduce self-esteem, Williams' research found. "Health problems can run the gamut from cardiovascular to stress-related," Williams says. The practice of ostracism can be traced to the Greeks, who used it to banish a public figure. Williams says it is present in the animal kingdom, too, where it is used to increase the group's chance of survival by eliminating the weakest link. Documentaries have shown this to be the case among lions and chimpanzees. Among humans, both females and males practice ostracism. But it is more
widely practiced by girls when they are in the primary grades as a form
of indirect aggression. He says some people who use the silent treatment to punish others get addicted to the behavior. He warns that ostracism has had consequences for perpetrators too. They have lost all contact with a family member or a friend. Williams has no illusions that ostracism can be stopped, but he hopes his work in applied science might influence the use of it by parents and school authorities. "Ostracism is one of the most widely used forms of social punishment, and some see it as more humane than corporal punishment, as when used in time-out. But there is a deeper psychological impact that needs to be taken seriously. We know that when people are ostracized, it can affect their perceptions, physiological condition, attitude and behavior — all of which sometimes can lead to aggression. "I'm working on the hypothesis that if you give a child some control over when he can come back from time-out, it can reduce his anti-social reactions," he says. Williams is the author of "Ostracism: The Power of Silence" (Guilford Press, $25) and co-editor of "The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection and Bullying" (Psychology Press, $75).
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