416 Iv. COGNITI vE AND M OTIvATIONAL P ROCESSES
lescent girls and women report greater will -
ingness to do things they know are wrong for 
the sake of keeping their partners happy (Be -
dell, 1997; Purdie & Downey, 2000). More 
recently, high-RS men have been shown to 
engage in greater ingratiation relative to 
low-RS men following rejection by a group 
(Romero-  Canyas et al., 2010). As such, these 
findings suggest that high-RS people put co -
ordinated efforts into preventing rejection, 
sometimes to the point of overaccommodat -
ing their partners and potentially compro -
mising their own well-being.
Perceptions of  Rejection → 
Negative  Overreactions
Research suggests that when high-RS people 
perceive rejection, they tend to overreact to 
these perceptions with defensive and negative 
behavior. High RS is associated with greater 
reactivity to perceived rejection, because in 
situations that activate fears and expecta -
tions of rejection, the defensive motivational 
system is automatically activated, preparing 
the individual physiologically and psycho -
logically for self-  defense even before rejec -
tion is actually perceived. In other words, 
rejection sensitivity primes the individual 
to respond to rejection in more intense and 
negative ways, and these responses tend to 
include both externalizing and internalizing 
behaviors.
The extant literature on RS has repeatedly 
demonstrated that perceived rejection elic -
its externalizing behaviors including, anger, 
hostility, and even physical violence among 
people high in RS. For example, Ayduk, 
Downey, Testa, Yen, and Shoda (1999) found 
that high-RS women pronounced hostility-  
related words (e.g., revenge ) more quickly 
relative to low-RS women, specifically when 
those words were preceded by rejection-  
related words (e.g., abandon ), suggesting 
that dynamics of high RS are characterized 
by a stronger activation pathway between 
thoughts of rejection and thoughts of hostil -
ity. Underscoring the situation-  specific acti -
vation of the RS dynamic, the facilitation of 
hostility as a function of RS was not observed 
when context words were negative in valence 
but unrelated to rejection (e.g., vomit ).
Hostile thoughts activated by rejection 
among high-RS individuals have also been 
found to translate into behavior. Labora -tory studies in which participants were led 
to believe that a potential online partner 
had rejected them elicited greater retaliatory 
rejection (e.g., negative impression ratings) 
and aggressive behavior (e.g., giving the re -
jector hot sauce, when they knew the person 
did not like hot sauce) as a function of RS 
(Ayduk et al., 1999, Study 2; Ayduk, Gy -
urak, & Luerssen, 2008). These patterns are 
mirrored in high-RS individuals’ ongoing 
relationships. For example, high-RS women 
are more likely to pick a fight with their 
partners than low RS women when they feel 
rejected (Ayduk et al., 1999, Study 2), and 
express greater hostility toward their part -
ners during conflicts (Downey, Freitas, Mi -
chaelis, & Khouri, 1998; Study 2). Similarly, 
high-RS men report using greater physical 
aggression to cope in conflicts with their 
romantic partners relative to low-RS men 
(Downey, Feldman, & Ayduk, 2000).
Research also suggests that hostility is not 
the only possible outcome associated with 
RS. In fact, rejection also leads to internal -
izing symptoms in which negative reactions 
following rejection are directed at the self. 
Ayduk, Downey, and Kim (2001) found 
that although high-RS women tended to be 
more depressed than low-RS women over 
the course of an academic year, those who 
had experienced a partner-  initiated break -
up during the year were significantly more 
depressed. This pattern was not seen if the 
high-RS women had themselves initiated the 
breakup, or if they had experienced academ -
ic failure, suggesting that rejection played a 
central role in eliciting depression.
In another study, Ayduk, Gyurak, and 
Luerssen (2009) examined the relationship 
between experiences of rejection and self- 
concept clarity. Given that the ability to pre -
vent or avoid rejection may be central to the 
high-RS person’s self-  concept, the hypoth -
esis was that experiences that communicate 
their failure in this domain (i.e., rejection) 
would undermine the structural stability 
of their self-  concept. Indeed, Ayduk et al. 
found that high-RS people reported feel -
ing less clear about their self-  concept than 
low-RS individuals following rejection expe -
riences (but not other kinds of negative ex -
periences) both in laboratory studies and in 
daily diary studies of dating couples.
Recent studies have also shown that high-
RS individuals are at greater risk for self-