How social exclusion makes you less intelligent

Reblogged from The Equality Trust:

As part of a series of research updates we are blogging about recently published research related to inequality and health and social outcomes. Here are the key points of a longer summary which can be found as a research update on our resources page. Please pass it on to friends and colleagues who may be interested and stay tuned for forthcoming updates.

• Research by American social psychologists, Baumeister, Nuss and Twenge, has found that anticipating being socially excluded or alone in life causes a decline in intellectual ability.    
• Three separate experiments investigating the possibility that social exclusion would alter intellectual ability found that while expectations of non-social misfortunes such as accidents or injuries and changes in mood did not impair intelligence, expectations of social exclusion did.  People who expected to be socially excluded attempted fewer problems in a test and made more errors on those they did attempt.
• The results suggest that social exclusion impairs intellectual ability by specifically impairing those intellectual processes that require considerable attention - controlled processes.  Social exclusion is seen as a threatening unpleasant event, people strive to suppress their emotional distress and the resulting drain on their executive function impairs their controlled processes.  
• This direct relationship between intelligent thought and social exclusion supports with the view that intelligence evolved as a means to support and facilitate social relations rather than to compensate for the absence of their advantages.  Indeed, the results may even offer a hint that intelligent thought in general may have an important social basis.

Read the full research update