Eleven studies (N = 2,254; 2 preregistered) examined whether ostracism would trigger suicidal thoughts and whether perceived meaning in life would account for this effect. The feeling of ostracism was induced via recalling a past experience (Studies 1a, 1c, 2c, and 3b), imagining a future experience (Studies 1d, 1e, and 2b), engaging in an online real-time interaction (Studies 1b and 2d), or receiving bogus personality feedback (Study 3a). Across all 11 studies, ostracism increased suicidal thoughts. Study 1a found that ostracism increased implicit associations of "death" and "me" relative to "life" and "me" on the Implicit Association Test of Suicide (Nock et al., 2010). In Study 1b, ostracized participants showed more suicidal thoughts in imagined stressful situations than did included participants. Studies 1c, 1d, and 1e further showed that ostracism increased explicit suicidal thoughts compared with both inclusion and neutral experiences. Furthermore, we found that perceived meaning in life accounted for ostracism's effect on suicidal thoughts (Studies 2a and 2b), even after controlling for depressive affect (Study 2c). In Study 2d, a preregistered study, we directly compared the contributions of perceived meaning in life and the 4 basic needs and mood proposed in William's (2007, 2009) ostracism framework, and we found that perceived meaning in life had a distinct mediating role in the ostracism-suicidal thinking link. Finally, Studies 3a and 3b found that self-affirmation exercises reduced suicidal thoughts following ostracism. Life lacks meaning without social connection, thereby activating suicidal thoughts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

More than 1 billion people worldwide report no religious affiliation. These religious "nones" represent the world's third largest religion-related identity group and are a diverse group, with some having previous religious identification and others never identifying as religious. We examined how 3 forms of religious identification-current, former, and never-influence a range of cognitions, emotions, and behavior. Three studies using nationally representative samples of religious Western (United States), secular Western (Netherlands, New Zealand) and Eastern (Hong Kong) cultures showed evidence of a religious residue effect: Formerly religious individuals (i.e., religious "dones") differed from never religious and currently religious individuals in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes. Study 1 (n = 3,071) offered initial cross-cultural evidence, which was extended in a preregistered replication study that also included measures of charitable contribution (Study 2; n = 1,626). Study 3 (N = 31,604) found that individuals who deidentified were still relatively likely to engage in prosocial behavior (e.g., volunteering) after leaving religion. This research has broad implications for understanding changing global trends in religious identification and their consequences for psychology and behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

According to the temporal need–threat model, ostracism results in three stages of responses. Research on the responses to ostracism has predominantly focused on the first two stages, and the literature needs further empirical evidence on responses to long-term ostracism. We conducted two studies to better understand the association between long-term ostracism and depressive symptoms. Study 1 found a positive association between long-term ostracism and depressive symptoms. More importantly, Study 1 found the threatened sense of meaning in life partially mediates the relationship. Study 2 further found that self-compassion, a positive and healthy trait, weakens the relationship between long-term ostracism and depressive symptoms. More specifically, self-compassion moderates the relationship between the threatened sense of meaning in life and depressive symptoms. Our findings not only further our understanding about the negative consequences of long-term ostracism but also suggest a possible way to mitigate depressive symptoms associated with long-term ostracism.

Gender segregation exists in all walks of life. One of the most common forms of institutionalized gender segregation is perhaps single-sex schooling. Because schooling experience has important influence on students’ psychosocial development, interest in gender-segregated education has been reviving over the globe. Skeptics of single-sex schooling have suggested that such schooling may increase students’ gender salience (awareness of gender in categorizations), reduce opportunities for mixed-gender interactions, and increase mixed-gender anxiety, but little evidence has been found. It is critical to explore how single-sex schooling is associated with these psychosocial outcomes in adolescents and young adults because they are in the developmental stage when the desire and need to establish mixed-gender relationships increase. We report two systematic studies on gender salience, mixed-gender friendships, and mixed-gender anxiety on 2059 high school students and 456 college students from single-sex or coeducational schools. Even with demographic background controlled, results suggested higher gender salience in single-sex school students in the high school sample, and greater mixed-gender anxiety and fewer mixed-gender friendships in these students in both samples. These differences were not moderated by student gender and were similar in first-year versus senior college students. Moreover, mixed-gender friendships, though not gender salience, appeared to engage in a possibly bi-directional mediation relationship with mixed-gender anxiety that is consistent with a vicious cycle of escalating anxiety and lack of mixed-gender interaction among single-sex school students. These findings help fill the knowledge gap about the correlates of gender-segregated schooling and shed light on the precursors of later social and achievement differences between single-sex and coeducational school students.