Relational Victimization and Rejection Sensitivity: The Long-Term Impact of Social Hurt

The Rejection Sensitivity Model is used to examine the social antecedents to expectations of rejection among adults. College students (N = 314) completed measures of relational victimization and rejection sensitivity. Results indicate that relational victimization is significantly related to rejection sensitivity for women. Implications for counseling and research are offered. ********** Early rejection experiences may be especially painful and confusing for adolescents who are in the process of developing a sense of personal identity (Portes, Sandhu, & Longwell-Grice, 2002). The outcomes of rejection specific to peers for young people are also well documented in the literature and are troubling. School violence (Leafy, Kowalski, Smith, & Phillips, 2003), aggressive behavior (Barnow, Lucht, & Freyberger, 2005), depression (Prinstein & Aikins, 2004), and suicide (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010) have all been associated with adolescent peer rejection experiences. Research studies have also considered the long-term outcomes of early peer rejection experiences and found relationships between rejection and later academic performance, externalizing issues such as aggression, and internalizing difficulties such as loneliness, depression, and self-concept (for a comprehensive review, see McDougall, Hymel, Vaillancourt, & Mercer, 2001). What is less well understood, however, is whether frequent rejection experiences during adolescence affect interpersonal functioning during adulthood. One likely outcome of frequent rejection experiences during adolescence is rejection sensitivity in adulthood. Rejection sensitivity refers to apprehensive expectations of, predispositions toward perceiving, and sensitive reactions to apparent rejection (Downey & Feldman, 1996). Some scholars have argued that insecure attachment related to rejection by caregivers or peers during childhood can result in higher levels of sensitivity to being rejected in adulthood (Downey & Feldman, 1996; Levy, Ayduk, & Downey, 2001). Much of the research in this area, however, has focused on the interpersonal and mental health outcomes of rejection sensitivity (Ayduk, Downey, Testa, Yen, & Shoda, 1999; Cassidy & Stevenson, 2005; Downey, Feldman, & Ayduk, 2000; Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998), leaving many unanswered questions about its development. What appears to be missing from the knowledge base is research that attends to early social and personal relationships that may influence the development of rejection sensitivity (Butler, Doherty, & Potter, 2007). The purpose of the current study is to examine the impact of a specific type of rejection experience during adolescence, relational victimization, on the development of rejection sensitivity with specific attention to differences between the sexes. REJECTION SENSITIVITY Counselors have long recognized the important relationship between sense of belonging and healthy development (Hazler & Mellin, 2004; Mellin, 2008; Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 2000). Rejection sensitivity, which draws heavily on ideas from traditional attachment and interpersonal theories of personality (Downey & Feldman, 1996), similarly conceptualizes the relationship between belonging and well-being. Attachment perspectives assert that children who experience rejection early in their lives are likely to develop working models of others as being likely to reject them and, as a result, become more vulnerable to developing depressive and anxiety disorders (Carnelley, Pietromonaco, & Jaffe, 1994). These insecure working models of others are thought to result in distrustful or hesitant relationship styles in adulthood (Downey & Feldman, 1996). The Rejection Sensitivity Model draws on attachment theory to suggest that when parents fail to meet children's articulated needs, then children become hypervigilant to rejection and anxiously expect rejection from others (Downey & Feldman, 1996). …