Fear of Rejection: Scale Development and Validation

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Fear of Rejection: Scale Development and Validation
Nida Nafees* Musaddiq Jahan**
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prejudice, ethnic discrimination, biases and
others, so fear of rejection can be considered as a
multifaceted construct that may result in many
severe malfunctionings such as rejection
sensitivity, social distancing, exclusion, identity
conflict, insecurity, and even violence.
Concerns or fear of rejection can make
individuals to avoid the clear and direct
overtures that would leave them vulnerable to
rejection and humiliation (Vorauer et. al., 2003).
Leary and Kowalsky, 1995 in their research
show that stressed individuals have a tendency
to withdraw or disaffiliate themselves from
situations that evoke evaluative concerns. Fear
of rejection also found to impede interest in
intergroup interactions (Shapiro et. al., 2011).
Acceptance and rejection both are
extremely important events in an individual's
life; both can rouse him/her emotionally and
psychologically. On being rejected a person can
develop a number of negative feelings that may
ISSN-0976 9218
Indian Journal of Psychological Science, V-10, No. 1 (070-076)
About Authors: *ICSSR Doctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology,
Aligarh Muslim University. Aligarh. UP. India.
**Professor, Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University. Aligarh. UP. India.
The present article tries to define the construct of fear of rejection and describes the
development of the fear of rejection scale. Fear of rejection can be defined as an irrational fear of
being rejected before making any actual attempt. It may be the result of continuous rejection in the
past. Fear of rejection can hamper the daily functioning of the person and hence affecting the overall
physical and psychological health. It is a grave social problem getting its roots deepening in the lives
of adolescents and young adults to be dealt with. The scale so developed was administered to 400
adolescents to determine its factor structure and the data collected were subjected to factor analysis
by using SPSS 20. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was carried out and varimax rotation
technique was used for rotating the factors. PCA yielded simple three-factor structure. The three
factors accounted for 52.38% of the variance. The present scale can be used for further research and
for development programs in school/universities and organizations.
Keywords: Rejection, Fear of rejection, Social Anxiety, Adolescents.
Abstract
IJPS
Fear of Rejection
Rejection has been defined as the action
of rejecting or the state of being rejected (The
Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). The word
rejection was first used in psychology in 1931 by
the students of Smith College and by P. M.
Symonds in 1939 in the study of the parent-child
relatio nship . The te rms r eject ion a nd
overprotection seem to have emerged as a result
of child guidance movement. Rejection is a
looming threat in everyone's life; with every
attempt at something new or difficult, there is
always the possibility that one will be rejected.
Schrier (2012) reported that 'Fear of rejection is
an irrational belief that no one will accept you for
the person you are, what you stand for and how
you behave', and this may be the result of
continuous rejection n the past. It is a kind of
extreme stress felt in response to a number of
factors in a person's environment. These factors
can be rejection from a particular community,
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Nida Nafees and Musaddiq Jahan
eventually result in lower self-esteem,
aggression and other antisocial behaviors. On
the other hand, being accepted tends to increase
the self-esteem and confidence of a person. In
their study, Buckley, Winkel, and Leary (2004)
found that the effects of rejection are stronger
than the effects of acceptance because negative
experiences tend to generate more feelings of
hurt and pain leading to aggressive and negative
behaviors. A meta-analysis of studies on
rejection showed that self-esteem is lowered by
rejection and it also exacerbates the mood and
makes a person feel bad about himself as a
person; he/she is more prone to feel worthless
and incompetent after encountering rejection
(Gerber & Wheeler, 2009).
Studies have found that children's
cours e o f n ormal and he alt hy soc ial
development is highly affected by the negative
experiences of rejection and exclusion from
social groups they face in their lives (Rubin et
al., 1998). For example, children who are
rejected from social groups are at risk for poor
academic achievement, increased depression,
and adolescent delinquency (Asher & Coie,
1990; Graham &Juvonen, 1998; Graham and
Taylor, 2002). This is further pointed out by
research on interpersonal rejection in adult
interactions, which, also states that interpersonal
rejection often leads to depression, anxiety,
feelings of nervousness and a reduced positive
motivation to join groups (Leary, 2015).
Fear of rejection has been studied earlier
in the light of religious exclusion from the
church members or rejection by God (Eduard H.
Schludermann et al., 2001) and fear of rejection
in romantic relationships (Jacquie D. Varauer et
al., 2003). But it is not studied in the context of
majority and minority community perspective.
Research has shown that people belonging to
ethnic minority groups often assume that people
of another group will reject them; be unwilling to
accept them on the basis of their group
membership, whether it is because of unfair
treatment i.e. discrimination (Branscombe,
Schmitt, & Harvey,1999), or lack of respect i.e.
devaluation (Huo & Molina,2006), so the new
test measuring fear of rejection among
adolescent will be proved very useful tool in
assessing the problems and then providing
pro bab le s olu tio n to era dica te t hem .
Fear of rejection may lead to a number
of behavioral, cognitive and affective problems
among adolescents. Behavioral, cognitive and
affective impairments are all interwoven with
each other. Fear of rejection may have such
strong effect on one's health involving each and
every aspect of his life. Person with fear of
rejection, whether by personal or vicarious
experience, strongly assumes that they will be
treated the same way every time they encounter
certain situation and this irrational expectation
of being rejected may deeply scar them, they
may have never been exposed to healthy way of
dealing with conflict or disagreement or them
may lack healthy self concept, sense of self
worth or positive self esteem.
A num ber of resea rch ers h ave
developed measures that are available to
measure ethnic discrimination (Perceived
Ethnic Discrimination Questionnaire PEDQ;
Brondolo et al., 2001), security-insecurity
(Maslow,1952), threat perception and prejudice,
but there is no such scale that can measure fear of
rejection which is becoming the most common
trait among the youths and adolescents who are
leading a stressful life with new challenges and
hurdles in their day to day life and ultimately
hampering their overall health.
Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of the present study
was to develop a scale on fear of rejection.
Further, to examine the psychometric properties
of Fear of Rejection scale and to conduct the
factor analyses necessary to identify content
based sub-dimensions of Fear of Rejection scale.
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Nida Nafees and Musaddiq Jahan
The significance of the new measure
To evaluate the effects of fear of
rejection within the stress model, it is necessary
to have reliable and valid measures of exposure
to fear of rejection. A number of investigators
have developed measures for other dimensions
but a recent review has pointed out that there are
still limited published data on this dimension.
Specifically, an instrument that can be used to
assess it.
Thoug h several previous studies
support the notion that various determinants of
fear of rejection viz. Exclusion, rejection
se ns itivity, social stigma, devaluatio n,
stereotype threat and others, prevent from
having sound mental wellbeing; fear of rejection
has not yet been studied empirically. Further, in
the present article, the results of an attempt to
create a scale that measures fear of rejection
have been reported.
The paper describes a new instrument,
the fear of rejection scale. The scale is a new
work towards dealing with the important social
problem, especially among ad olescents,
prevailing in present society. The actual items of
the scale inquired about a varied number of
everyday experiences, especially related to
intergroup interaction. The scale can be used
with any ethnic group.
of Rejection scale. The participants were
th th
selected from class 10 to 12 .
Development of Fear of Rejection Scale
To develop the Fear of Rejection scale
(FOR Scale), items were first selected on the
basis of literature review available on the
subject. Specifically, a preliminary version of
the questionnaire with twenty-two items was
introduced to five experts from the department
of psychology, Aligarh Muslim University,
Aligarh. Expert's feedback was sought to filter
the phrasing of presented items, to provide
feedback about the meaning and acceptability of
the questions, to generate new items reflecting
their understanding of the construct, to delete or
remove inept items and to gain assistance on the
practicability of administration in large group
setting and to suggest other measurement
st rategies. The d raft version o f t he
questionnaire included items and methods
suggested by the experts. Five items were
deleted from the original scale.
The fear of rejection scale with twenty
items was finalized with 7-point Likert type
responses, viz. 'Always', 'Very often', 'Often',
'Sometimes', 'Seldom', 'Very Seldom', 'Never'
Scoring System
Table 1 Scoring System
Always Very often Often Sometimes Seldom Very Seldom Never
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The minimum and maximum possible
score of the scale varies from 15 to 105. A higher
score indicates a higher level of fear of rejection.
Participants and procedure
The final draft of the questionnaire with
seventeen items was administered to a large
sample consisting adolescents of various
schools of Aligarh Muslim University. A total of
400 adolescent participants (243 female,
60.75%; 157 male, 39.25%) completed the Fear
Participants' average age was 16 years
(14-18 years). The majority of participants self-
identified as Muslims (258; 64.5% while 138
Participants; 34.5% self-identified as Hindus, 4;
1% others. 335; 83.7% participants were from an
urban background and 62; 15.5% participants
from a rural background and 3 participants did
not record their area of living.
The measure was administered to
students in groups; class wise. Participants were
helped if they could not understand any term in
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the scale; researcher was available to assist as
necessary. Instructions for the participants were
provided at the beginning of the scale. The
subjects were assured that their responses will be
kept confidential and will be used for the
research purpose only. Participants were asked
to g i ve i nfor m ati o n r e gard i ng b a sic
demographic details i.e. gender, age, religion,
SES, an area they live in, parents' education and
their level of education.
Results
Factor Structure of the Fear of Rejection
Scale
Content validity of the scale was
verified by some experts of the field and
academicians. There are various methods to
establish construct validity of the tool. Factor
analysis with varimax rotation was used to
establish the construct validity of the tool. Data
screening was carried out to overcome existence
of multicollinearity and singularity in the scale.
For testing multicollinearity and singularity
'determinant' of R matrix was estimated and it
was greater than .00001. Sample adequacy was
also carried out and found to be greater than .50
as required in both cases.
The principal component analysis was
performed on responses to the 20 item fear of
rejection scale to condense the data. Three
factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were
extracted and subjected to varimax rotation.
The three factors defined by three or more items
were interpretable and together accounted for
52.38% of total variance.
Two items having factor loading below
than .4 were removed as a result of the principal
component analysis. 15 of the original
seventeen items designed to assess the various
facets of fear of rejection were selected as the
final version of the scale. The percentage of
variance accounted by factors varies from 23.23
to 13.48. The factorial validity of the sale was
found high. The factor loadings, the percentage
of variance and cumulative percent of variance
for each factor are shown in the table given.
Table 2 Items and Factor Loadings of Fear of Rejection Scale
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Nida Nafees and Musaddiq Jahan
Inter-Factorial Validity
The Inter-Factorial Validity of the scale
was calculated to test the construct validity of the
scale. Pearson's correlations coefficients were
calculated between the factors, measuring the
similar construct, fear of rejection. Analyses
confirm that all the factors as correlated to each
other. All the factors were found to have a
significant positive correlation with each other
at .01 level (exclusion and rejection sensitivity,
r=.30 p<.01; exclusion and people pleasing,
r=.130 p<.01; rejection sensitivity and people
pleasing, r=.327, p<.01).
Table 3 Inter Correlations between Factors
Factors
F1
F2
F3
Exclusion (F1)
1
Rejection Sensitivity (F2)
People Pleasing (F3)
.300**
.130**
1
.327**
1
**correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
Inter-factorial correlations indicate that
all the factors are significantly correlated with
each other and measuring the same construct.
Low correlations between the factors show that
each dimension independently measures the
construct.
Reliability
The psychometric properties of fear of
rejection scale have been shown and Cronbach's
alpha of each factor has also been calculated and
shown in the table given.
Full group
(n=400)
Subscale Item
Factors No. of items Coefficient
alpha(? )
M SD M SD
Exclusion 6 .890 23.29 11.01 3.88 1.8
Rejection sensitivity 5 .756 17.75 6.86 3.5 1.3
People pleasing 3 .688 14.66 6.06 3.73 1.7
Total Scale 17 .796 62.70 17.68 3.6 1.04
Table 4 Psychometric Properties of Fear of Rejection Scale
The Cronbach's Alpha for each of the
four factors varies from .68 to .89, which
indicates that the internal consistency of the
factor s o f the s c a l e w a s a d equat e .
The Cronbach's Alpha for the total fear of
rejection scale was found .79 which is
significant at .01 levels. The internal
consistency of the scale has been found to be
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high that supports the notion that the scale has
excellent reliability.
Discussion
The objective of the study was to
develop and determine the psychometric
characteristics, i.e. reliability and validity of the
Fear of Rejection scale developed for
adolescents of the Indian population (especially
for minority community). Using principal
component analysis, we determine the internal
factorial/construct validity of the scale, which is
highly satisfactory. As a result of the principal
component analysis, three factors namely,
exclusion, rejection sensitivity and people
pleasing emerged naturally measuring the fear
of rejection in adolescents of the Indian
population. Two items namely 'I don't
understand what people of other group
expect from me' and 'I try not to look different
from others', were deleted from the scale as a
result of factor analysis. These items yielded
low factor loadings and thus removed from the
scale to form the final version of the fear of
rejection scale with fifteen items. Total scale
coefficient alpha was found to be .79, based on
400 adolescents confirmed that the fear of
rejec tio n s cale h as qui te sat isf actor y
psychometric properties.
Jessica L Lakin et. al. (2008) found in
their study that exclusion is linked with
heightened mimicry behavior in order to look
like others which he called a direct threat to
belongingness. Nuran Bayram (2012) also
found that the lack or absence of social
participation may negatively affect the overall
quality of life of a person and rejection concerns
may lead to stressful intergroup interaction
(Shelton & Richeson, 2005). The present study
presents a scale incorporating all these variables
which directly or indirectly affects the overall
quality of life of people and we expect that
development of the fear of rejection scale will
help set off a new line of research that explores
the relationship between fear of rejection and
other significant psychological processes.
Because fear of rejection may have deleterious
psychological effects, it is important to study
this variable with other social factors too so that
remedial steps can be taken to reduce this fear
among the adolescents and young.
In future research, the scale may be
standardized on the different population as it is
limited only to adolescents and some other
means of measuring fear of rejection should also
be devised in order to understand the
phenomenon more clearly.
The authors declare that there is no
conflict of interest.
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