According Mr. Leary, human beings have a "strong need to belong" and an even stronger aversion to being rejected.
"Extensive evidence supports the idea that people greatly desire social attachments, think often about their relationships with other people, and expend considerable effort to maintain and protect social bonds, even bonds that have become unnecessary or a source of pain or trouble".
But he also suggests that rejection is inevitable.
"One irony of interpersonal life is that, although everybody desires to be accepted and dreads rejection, people nonetheless regularly reject one another in small and large ways".
"Not only must a person desire to socialize with and be accepted by other people, but the other individuals must be willing, at minimum, to tolerate having him or her around....
Thus, human beings may possess specialized psychological systems that monitor and regulate their quest for social acceptance" (pg.4)
"As a result, the person seeks out the other individual's company, treats that person nicely, provides emotional support and other social provisions, does things to maintain a relationship with the person, and so on, depending on how much he or she values a particular relationship".It means that if the person if not valued as "worthy" to the relationship, then there is no relationship.
"In contrast, what we call rejection is a state of low relational evaluation in which a person does not regard his or her relationship with another individual as valuable, important, or close. In extreme cases, people may regard the relationship as worthless or even give it a negative value, in which case they exclude, ostracize, abandon, or banish the individual.
In milder cases, people may value their relationship with an individual only minimally and thus invest little or nothing in sustaining the relationship".
HMMM
"Betrayal is often experienced as rejection because it conveys that another person does not value his or her relationship with us as much as we had believed or else the betrayal would not have occurred".
"When people feel accepted or rejected, they are reacting not to the objective degree to which others value their relationship but rather to their perceptions of the degree to which they are valued". - perceived relational evaluation.
Maybe this is why people love watching Friends so much because they feel accepted into the group of friends shown through their screen, The six characters on the show love and care for each other, so when we watch it, it feels like we're one of them. But if Ross and Rachel didn't end up together at the end, would we have felt betrayed? Betrayal means rejection because it conveys that the other person does not value the relationship. It would have been really upsetting had Rachel not got off the plane.
But even if the show ended with Rachel in Paris, and Ross in New York, we would have felt betrayed at first, but then moved on from it. We were once really sad that Friends ended in 2004; and felt betrayed, but we moved on.
"Any explanation of people's reactions to rejection must dtake into account the degree to which they desire others to value having relationships with them... People with low self-esteem, who are socially anxious, depressed, or narcissistic, or who have an insecure attachment style often see more rejection in people's behavior than is warranted".
"The things that people do to be 'accepted' by others involve behaviors that they think will increase their relational value - that is, lead others to value having relationships with them more highly. The ways in which people try to gain acceptance and avoid rejection typically involve efforts to make themselves more desirable".
"Rejection is an inevitable feature of social life. As a result, each of us will play the roles of the rejector and the rejectee many times in our lives. Most of the time, rejection arises not out of hate or malice but rather from a simple failure to value one's relationship with another individual".
So, according to Mr. Leary, humans like to be involved in a clique where each individual is considered worthy and valuable to the clique. It means that the society is grouped into different cliques - or even class - no matter how much we try to ignore it.
"Extensive evidence supports the idea that people greatly desire social attachments, think often about their relationships with other people, and expend considerable effort to maintain and protect social bonds, even bonds that have become unnecessary or a source of pain or trouble".
But he also suggests that rejection is inevitable.
"One irony of interpersonal life is that, although everybody desires to be accepted and dreads rejection, people nonetheless regularly reject one another in small and large ways".
"Not only must a person desire to socialize with and be accepted by other people, but the other individuals must be willing, at minimum, to tolerate having him or her around....
Thus, human beings may possess specialized psychological systems that monitor and regulate their quest for social acceptance" (pg.4)
"As a result, the person seeks out the other individual's company, treats that person nicely, provides emotional support and other social provisions, does things to maintain a relationship with the person, and so on, depending on how much he or she values a particular relationship".It means that if the person if not valued as "worthy" to the relationship, then there is no relationship.
"In contrast, what we call rejection is a state of low relational evaluation in which a person does not regard his or her relationship with another individual as valuable, important, or close. In extreme cases, people may regard the relationship as worthless or even give it a negative value, in which case they exclude, ostracize, abandon, or banish the individual.
In milder cases, people may value their relationship with an individual only minimally and thus invest little or nothing in sustaining the relationship".
HMMM
"Betrayal is often experienced as rejection because it conveys that another person does not value his or her relationship with us as much as we had believed or else the betrayal would not have occurred".
"When people feel accepted or rejected, they are reacting not to the objective degree to which others value their relationship but rather to their perceptions of the degree to which they are valued". - perceived relational evaluation.
Maybe this is why people love watching Friends so much because they feel accepted into the group of friends shown through their screen, The six characters on the show love and care for each other, so when we watch it, it feels like we're one of them. But if Ross and Rachel didn't end up together at the end, would we have felt betrayed? Betrayal means rejection because it conveys that the other person does not value the relationship. It would have been really upsetting had Rachel not got off the plane.
But even if the show ended with Rachel in Paris, and Ross in New York, we would have felt betrayed at first, but then moved on from it. We were once really sad that Friends ended in 2004; and felt betrayed, but we moved on.
"Any explanation of people's reactions to rejection must dtake into account the degree to which they desire others to value having relationships with them... People with low self-esteem, who are socially anxious, depressed, or narcissistic, or who have an insecure attachment style often see more rejection in people's behavior than is warranted".
"The things that people do to be 'accepted' by others involve behaviors that they think will increase their relational value - that is, lead others to value having relationships with them more highly. The ways in which people try to gain acceptance and avoid rejection typically involve efforts to make themselves more desirable".
"Rejection is an inevitable feature of social life. As a result, each of us will play the roles of the rejector and the rejectee many times in our lives. Most of the time, rejection arises not out of hate or malice but rather from a simple failure to value one's relationship with another individual".
So, according to Mr. Leary, humans like to be involved in a clique where each individual is considered worthy and valuable to the clique. It means that the society is grouped into different cliques - or even class - no matter how much we try to ignore it.