ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1625978
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial Influences on Ontogenetic DevelopmentView all 3 articles
Discovering Antecedents of Antisocial Behavior in the Classroom: The Influence of Social Exclusion on Antisocial Risk-Taking
Provisionally accepted
- University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
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This study investigates how social exclusion experiences influence antisocial risk-taking behaviors in adolescents by examining the interplay between classroom social acceptance and experimentally induced social exclusion. Using a sequential experimental design with students in years 7-9 of the German school system (ages 12-16), we first assessed participants’ classroom social acceptance within their classrooms through sociometric measures, then randomly assigned them to experience either experimentally induced social inclusion (n = 63) or exclusion (n = 63) using the Cyberball paradigm, and finally measured their antisocial risk-taking using an adapted Columbia Card Task as well as moral disengagement. Results revealed a complex relationship whereby social exclusion effects were moderated by pre-existing classroom social acceptance status. Well-integrated adolescents responded to exclusion by reducing antisocial risk-taking when potential harm to others was high, while poorly integrated adolescents demonstrated the opposite pattern, increasing risky choices that could harm others. Our exploratory analysis further indicated that moral disengagement was positively associated with antisocial risk-taking and negatively correlated with classroom social acceptance, particularly among excluded adolescents. These findings suggest that responses to social exclusion are not uniform but depend critically on adolescents’ established social status, contributing to our understanding of the cognitive and social factors that shape decision-making in antisocial contexts during this developmental period.
Keywords: antisocial risk-taking, social exclusion, Classroom sociometry, social acceptance, Moral disengagement
Received: 09 May 2025; Accepted: 30 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lorenz, Nicolay, Hank, Huber and Ferdinand. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Corinna Lorenz, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
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