Cyberball Game

The Cyberball game is a task that has been widely used to induce social exclusion and inclusion in aggression research (Williams et al., 2000; Warburton et al., 2006; DeWall et al., 2010; Hühnel et al., 2017). Participants were told that they would play a ball-throwing game with two other players who were in fact virtual computer players. During the game, they may receive the ball passed by others and could throw the ball to other players. Participants were randomly assigned to the exclusion and inclusion groups. In the exclusion condition, after receiving the ball two times at the onset of the game, the participants do not receive the balls anymore. In the inclusion condition, the participants would receive the ball 10 times of the 30 total tosses (Williams et al., 2000; Riva et al., 2015).