On this Student Spotlight during University of Southern California Dornsife Week: What does your brain learn from rejection?
Begüm G Babür, Ph. D student in social psychology, analyzes the results.
Begüm is a Ph.D. student in the Social Connection Lab at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Statistics from Barnard College. Her research examines how people navigate social interactions, learn from their social environment, and form meaningful connections using behavioral paradigms, neuroimaging, and computational modeling. Her recent paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that social rejection can help people learn about others and decide whom to connect with.
Your Brain Learns From Rejection
Imagine finding out your friends hosted a party and didn’t invite you, or being passed over for a job you were excited about. These moments hurt, and we often describe rejection like physical pain.
That’s not just a metaphor. Rejection triggers stress hormones, lowers self-esteem, and can affect both mental and physical health. From an evolutionary perspective, rejection once meant losing safety and resources, so our brains register it as a threat.
But is pain the whole story?
In relationships, we’re always learning — figuring out who values us and adjusting how we respond. So, my colleagues and I asked: could rejection also serve as a learning signal?
To find out, we designed an experiment that mimicked real social decisions. Participants played a multi-round game while undergoing brain scans. In each round, they were either accepted or rejected by a partner, based on how that partner had ranked them and whether they made the cutoff for a limited number of spots. In reality, both ranks and spots were computer-generated.
We found that the brain doesn’t just react to rejection, it learns from it in two ways. It tracks how often someone accepts you, and it also picks up on cues about how much they value you — even if you don’t get picked. Much like when a friend skips your party for a good reason, you can still tell they value you. These two signals guided future choices about whom to approach or avoid.
Interestingly, different brain regions processed each signal: one region responded to changes in how valued people felt, the other to the rewarding experience of acceptance.
So, while rejection may hurt, we also learn from it. Each interaction gives us a clue about who values us, helping us decide whom to connect with or let go.
Read More:
[PNAS] – Neural responses to social rejection reflect dissociable learning about relational value and reward
