Biological Respond to Social Rejection in Indonesian Sample

Harmony is a value which strongly hold by Indonesian. The value influences Indonesians’ daily interpersonal relation with their surroundings. Previous research indicated that social rejection thwarted the need for social belonging as well as triggered aggression. Besides those social impact, social rejection was also followed by biological response. One of the biological indicators which associated with social rejection is salivary cortisol. The aim of this research was to study the salivary cortisol change following social rejection in Indonesian sample. Cyberball paradigm was used to manipulate social rejection in laboratory context. Fifty-three people, which consists of 24 males and 29 females, participated in this study. The participants were divided into control group (n = 25) and experimental group (n = 28). Saliva samples were collected before and after participants playing ball tossing game. Paired-samples t-test showed that posttest salivary cortisol of both groups was significantly lower that their pretests. The decrease of salivary cortisol of control group (t = 6.160, p < .001) was slightly more significant than experimental group (t = 3.047, p < .01). But after controlling the pretest salivary cortisol, it was found that there was not any significant difference between control and experimental group.