Updating Expectations and Behavior in Changing Social Environments

Our social world is inherently dynamic. Individuals may experience shifts from being ignored or rejected (i.e., exclusion) to being accepted (i.e., inclusion) and, at times, to receiving disproportionately high levels of attention or affirmation (i.e., overinclusion). These fluctuations can occur between social contexts and require continuous updating of expectations, emotions, and behavior. The Cyberball paradigm (Williams, 2000) has been widely used to experimentally manipulate social inclusion and exclusion, providing a controlled framework for examining such adaptive processes. Depression is particularly relevant in this context, as it is characterized by persistent disturbances in affect, cognition, and motivation that may compromise individuals’ ability to flexibly adapt to changing social environments. Depressed individuals tend to report lower baseline levels of perceived belonging, heightened sensitivity to social threat, and reduced responsiveness to positive social feedback. These features may hinder their ability to update expectations in response to changes in social inclusion, leading to prolonged negative interpretations even when social conditions improve. As such, depression may play a key role in shaping how individuals process and respond to dynamic fluctuations in social belonging. The present preregistered study will aim to test how individual differences in depressive symptoms shape cognitive, affective, and behavioral adjustment to dynamic changes in belongingness. More specifically, this study will examine the dynamic changes in belongingness across two directional transitions: from exclusion to overinclusion, and from overinclusion to exclusion.