Money or attention? Sex differences in reactions to social exclusion

We examined differences in the ways in which men and women perceive and react to social exclusion. Men typically experience agentic-type threats in a social exclusion context and are motivated to improve their agentic belief in themselves, whereas women experience communal-type threats and pay greater attention to others. In this study, we employed the pursuit of money as an agentic form of compensation and pursuit of attention as a communal form of compensation. In 2 experiments with high school students as participants (N = 103 and 126, respectively), we found that social exclusion increases the preference of men for a high salary and the preference of women for conspicuous products, and that self-focus mediates these effects. We have contributed to the literature by exploring the different coping strategies of men and women who face social exclusion.