The weird thing your brain does to help you cope with rejection
by Ariana Pezeshki
Let’s face it. There is no sting as sharp as rejection.
We’ve all been there. And we’d rather not re-live that deep-burning, soul-crushing sensation ever again.
But, as excruciating as the pain might be, it could be worse. Not hypothetically – literally.
Researchers have discovered that our brains are designed to soften the blow, when it comes to anything from dealing with unrequited love to a recruiter telling you they “hired someone internally”.
A new study helmed by Christian Jarrett, published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, has found that when you’ve been barred, your brain alters your visual perception to trick you into believing you’re more accepted than you really are.
Basically, your vision temporarily expands so you can find signs of acceptance elsewhere.
Researchers call this occurrence a widening “cone of gaze” – so you can find that sweet validation we all crave as humans elsewhere.
To reach this conclusion, the study’s authors created a scenario in which two people played a game, and the third was excluded. After the game, participants were given a series of photos to analyse, which pictured "people either staring straight ahead, as if they were making eye contact with the viewer, or looking slightly askance," according to Science of Us.
The volunteers that were then left out in the game “were more inclined to say that off-centre gazes were looking at them,” said Jarrett, “and they tended to report feeling more strongly that they were being looked at.”
Sure, it's a strange kind of compensation, but hey, when it comes to a nasty snub, we’ll take whatever consolation we can.
