The price of rejection: How social feedback influences spending on social experiences

In our increasingly digital world, understanding how negative online social experiences shape the value of social opportunities is critical. We examined whether social rejection alters individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) for hypothetical social versus nonsocial experiences. In a two-part preregistered experiment (N = 98), participants uploaded Instagram photos and completed a simulated social media task in which they received randomized positive and negative feedback on their photos from anonymous peers. During the task, participants also made 100 decisions in which they could hypothetically "purchase" personally meaningful social and nonsocial activities. Participants preferred social experiences overall but, following social rejection, spent significantly less of an endowment on social options. Exploratory analyses revealed that individual differences in social connectedness and reward sensitivity modulated sensitivity to the relative cost of social experiences. These findings suggest that rejection does not reduce the underlying value of social connection but influences choice by increasing sensitivity to emotional and contextual factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).