On the final episode for this season, we are talking all about ghosting. Kirstin and Bey sit down with Dr. Gili Freedman to discuss her work in studying the impact of rejection. They discuss the best ways to reject someone and what is going on physiologically when we feel rejected. Finally, we end this episode talking to Philadelphia street artist Amberella.

Links for this episode:

• Learn more about Dr. Gili Freedman
• Learn more about Amberella
• Read episode transcript

Hello hello and welcome to So Curious, presented by the Franklin Institute.

We are your host.

I am the Bul Bey.

No, I'm the Bul Bey.

And Bey and I are so happy to bring you

our final episode of season two of So Curious.

We did it! Yeah.

Long season, but a fun season.

We have covered a lot of topics.

We have talked about how frogs make first impressions on their mates.

We talked about hookup culture today.

We talked about marriage, non monogamy and everything in between.

And now, in true dramatic fashion, we are going to go out with a bang.

In our final episode of this season, we

are going to be breaking down ghosting and rejection.

The demise of connection.

Ghosting- harsh.

In this episode, we are talking with social psychologist Dr.

Gili Freedman about the best way to reject someone.

So, get your notes and take notes.

And later, we're going to hear from Philadelphia street artist Amberella about

her art installation dedicated specifically to the man who ghosted her

Epic, iconic -So Bey, as artists, in our field, rejection is a big old part of it.

As performers, we just get our feelings hurt for a living sometimes, right?

No, it's kind of true. Yeah.

How have you kind of learned to navigate that in your career?

It's obviously so much harder in the beginning, right?

Oh, yeah.

I think the hardest thing about being

creative and going into these art spaces is that we're commodifying our emotions.

And that's tough because when you get rejected, that's like, I really like this

thing and I really wanted to see this happen.

And it depends on how many times I get rejected.

I'm a pretty stubborn and persistent person, and I tend to be patient.

I think patience is really helpful for me

because if an idea gets shut down, I'll wait and see if there's another

opportunity for that idea to be accepted again.

Because good ideas are just good ideas.

It may not happen at that exact moment, but be patient and work on it still, it's

not so much about, I don't know, jumping on every opportunity.

You just have to kind of be patient.

So I'm patient and I'm kind of equal parts grace, equal parts persistence.

Damn.

I have an exact opposite take on rejection, which is that it's just anytime

I get rejected, I just jump into the school.

Yeah, it's hard.

It was really hard at the beginning, especially as an actor.

Literally, the statistic is always like,

for every 100 times you audition, you will get one of those.

You're always being told no.

And it's super hard in the beginning

because, like you said, it's like, this is me, though.

Don't take it personally. It's just business.

It's like I'm not applying for a job to work at a certain place, like, I'm asking

you to like me and you're like, right, but it's freaking hard.

Oh, my God. And it never gets easier but you do learn

better ways to be rejected and better ways to handle it.

Which is why I think also it's really cool

to hear that there is like a science behind it, right?

And that's a great segue- we're going to hear some more about rejection from that

scientific standpoint, so let's bring on our first guest rejection experts, dr.

Gili Friedman. Welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me here. Yeah.

So, Gili, do you mind just telling us a little bit about yourself, what you do?

So I'm an assistant professor of psychology at St.

Mary's College of Maryland, and I'm a

social psychologist, and one of the main things I study is social rejection.

Nice. Tell us about your academic journey.

What inspired you to study social exclusion?

So I started thinking about social

exclusion when I was an undergrad at Haveherford College and I wound up doing

my senior thesis on that topic and I was reading about it and noticing that a lot

of the work really focused on how it feels to be rejected.

And the answer is generally really bad, as you might imagine.

But what there was a lot less on is what's

going on with the person doing the rejecting, why are they doing it?

How do they feel?

Does it matter who they are as a person in terms of how they decide to do it?

And so I went to graduate school at the

University of Texas at Austin and wound up working with Dr.

Jennifer Beer and started thinking about

the sort of two sided nature of social rejection and when people decide to reject

and the language they use when they're rejecting.

And that's how it got started.

Could you explain some of the different

tools that you have used to study social rejection?

And specifically since we're going to be

talking about Ghosting today, specifically Ghosting?

A Lot of the work that we do on ghosting and on rejection uses pretty typical

self report methods like surveys and things like that.

But we also have been able to use things like interactive narratives.

So there's this tool called Twine that you can use online.

It's free to use and you can create a story where people have choices.

So if you remember like, choose your own adventure books where you go in and

there's a choice and you get to decide for the choose of your own adventure ones like

do I go into the cave or do I go explore the woods?

And we use that for some of our rejection

work, putting people in situations and asking them, what would you do here?

Would you tell the person this thing or do you tell them this other thing?

And so that's been great because it allows our participants to have a more immersive

experience instead of just asking them questions.

And it lets us look at some interesting ideas.

For example, one of my at St.

Mary's College in Maryland, I work with

really great undergraduate students and they all do a senior thesis and so one of

my students is doing one on rejection and she used this interactive narrative to

look at deception within the context of rejection.

And so she lets people be in this story

where they're interacting with someone and they have to decide how to reject them.

And thinking about how lies play a role in that.

Can you explain why it's sometimes harder to reject than be rejected?

I think that it can be really hard because of something called scriptlessness.

This is something that researchers were talking about in the 90s.

But the idea that when we're in a social situation, we have scripts that we follow.

So if you're in a restaurant and someone comes up to you with a notepad, you know

that they're probably going to ask you what you want to eat, and you're going to

tell them that, and at some point they'll bring it back.

But with rejection, we don't have any good scripts.

There's no great way of rejecting because

anything that would be a script is a cliche.

So you could say it's not you, it's me,

but everyone knows it's a cliche, so it doesn't work.

And so you're put in a situation where you don't know what to say, there's no great

thing you can say, and you don't necessarily want to hurt the other person.

Right.

You just don't want to do whatever it is with them.

And so that puts people in an uncomfortable situation that they don't

know how to get out of, and we have no good answers for them.

Do you have any good scripts to offer us?

Can you give me a new script other than like, it's not you, it's me?

I would love to. That's what we're trying to figure out.

Yeah.

So we don't have a great answer.

We know that some things don't seem to

help, so apologies don't seem to be a great solution to that problem, but we

don't have a great answer for like, this is definitely what you should do.

So you have an article that you wrote

the impact of apologies on social rejection".

Basically, you're finding that rejections

that include apologies actually increase hurt feelings and increase aggression.

Can you explain why you think this might be?

In some ways this comes back to the idea of a script.

And when we apologize to someone, like, in

any context, we kind of expect that they're going to forgive us.

So if I bump into you and say, I'm sorry, I expect you to say, oh, that's okay.

Right? And if you don't, that's weird.

And so what happens is we are kind of constraining people's responses when we

apologize because there's a social norm they're supposed to follow.

Now, if I rejected you, you're probably upset, you're probably hurt.

It's not a great situation.

And then I apologize.

Well, now you need to tell me that that's okay.

So you, in some ways need to comfort me,

even though I'm just the one who rejected you.

And we think that that really puts people in a situation they don't like being in

because they're having to express forgiveness without actually feeling it.

So if you've ever been in a situation

where someone has apologized to you and you're like, I really don't forgive you

right now, but you felt like you have to say, that's okay, it doesn't feel good.

Right. Let's turn to the topic of ghosting,

specifically, what differentiates ghosting from other forms of rejection?

Ghosting is different in that you're not actually communicating the rejection.

Your lack of communication is the action.

So we think about ghosting as ending a relationship by cutting off all contact.

So in other forms of rejection, you might tell the person, right.

Whereas with Ghosting, they're sending you messages.

Maybe they're trying to get in touch with you and you're just not answering.

And that leaves them in a state of not knowing.

Right there's that moment when you've been ghosted where you're not actually sure if

you have yet, because maybe they just haven't responded.

And I think that really differentiates it

from a more explicit form of rejection where, you know, oh, it's over.

I'll jump onto the next question.

Your article, "Ghosting and Destiny," you talk about implicit theories of

relationships that have identified two types of beliefs destiny and growth.

Can you talk more about that?

Yeah, this is really interesting work that

was still being done on how we think about the nature of relationships.

And so people vary in terms of how they conceive of relationships in general.

Not like a specific relationship, but overall.

And so people can believe, for example, that a relationship is either going to

work or it's not, that the success of a relationship is destined from the very

beginning, and those are called destiny beliefs.

Or you could believe that relationships

need to be worked on over time, that with enough effort, any relationship can work,

that relationships are like a garden that needs to be tended.

Those are growth beliefs.

And so people vary in terms of how

strongly they believe each of those things.

Yeah.

Can these theories help us understand ghosting any better?

So what we found that we were really intrigued by was that people who have

stronger destiny beliefs feel more positively about ghosting.

They're more likely to say they would

ghost, and they're more likely to have previously used ghosting to end

relationships before, which makes a lot of sense, because if you think that a

relationship is either going to work or it isn't, then just cutting it off when you

feel like it's not working anymore, that's probably pretty rational.

Whereas if you're someone who thinks less like that and you don't think it's just

one person, and this is either it or it's not, then Ghosting might feel a little

harsh and like, why aren't you giving it more of a chance?

Why are you just cutting it off, like, so completely?

What are the research methods to measure

the impact of Ghosting and the reason people do it?

What's the bar for that?

So for a lot of that, it's really self report.

So asking people to tell us, have you Ghosted before?

Have you been Ghosted?

How does that make you feel?

Because with these things, it's your experience, right?

If we want to understand your experience,

then sometimes just asking about that can be the best way of doing it.

There are a lot of reasons that people

will give if you ask them, why did you go someone?

And one of those is not wanting to hurt

someone's feelings, feeling like it's easier.

The thing that keeps me really interested

in social rejection is the fact that you have two sides who have legitimate worries

and negative emotions, and they're trying to balance it.

And it's not really a villain hero story, right, which is a lot of times how it's

portrayed in the media of like, oh, the person you rejected is a terrible person.

They're breaking that other person's heart.

But both people are managing complex emotions, and the rejecter might not want

to hurt the other person, and so they're looking for ways to do it, and maybe they

make bad decisions sometimes because we don't know how to do it.

But I think Ghosting can really fall under

that category a lot of times of, I don't know how to end this well.

I don't know what the right thing to say is.

It's going to be really uncomfortable.

Maybe if I just don't say anything, it'll be better for everyone.

Do you have any personal accounts or

stories to share where the rejection had a more healthier outcome and the rejection

maybe had a more not so pleasant or pretty outcome?

So I think one example I have of how complicated it is, is I had been on a few

dates with someone years ago, and it went pretty well.

He had asked me that he had initiated the first couple of dates.

I sent him a message about the third, and he wrote me back a very kind, lovely

message saying he wasn't interested, but it had been great to hang out.

And I remember this because I felt hurt.

And I was studying rejection at the time,

and I even knew, like, oh, this was a nice rejection, right?

He did everything he was supposed to, but I still don't feel great.

And I think that really highlights the complicated nature of it, right?

That you can do everything right, and the

other person is still going to have feelings, and that's okay.

That's just kind of part of the process.

The one time I've ghosted someone, I did feel very guilty about it.

I just didn't know what to say.

It was exactly that situation.

I wasn't interested.

And they sent me pictures of graphs from their research in a text message.

And I was just like, I don't know what to say to this.

And I never responded.

So that was probably not the most mature

way of dealing with it, but it was 100% for reasons we just talked it, right.

I didn't have a script. I didn't know what to say.

I didn't want to hurt the person, but that's sort of how it wound up.

Do you have any recommendations for ways

that might be a good way to reject somebody?

I think in general, what the research has

shown is that not talking to people isn't great.

So there's a lot of work on Ostracism,

which is the silent treatment, which has a lot of similarities to ghosting.

And a lot of that research shows it's a really hurtful thing to do.

It's hard to get over.

And so I think when you can communicate,

that's going to be a better bet for the most part.

And people generally tend to appreciate it.

And I think in terms of what to say, I

think not apologizing is probably a good thing.

I think thinking about what you would want to be told right.

And remembering that that other person has

feelings and is also entitled to their feelings.

Right. Because, again, you could say everything

right, and they still might not be super happy.

And that's just the reality of the situation.

Thank you for taking time and not rejecting us and stepping into the space

with information and just a really open conversation.

I really appreciate that.

Yes, this is super interesting to hear.

There is so much science and research behind something that feels so universal

but doesn't feel like it's talked about very often.

So thank you for doing the work that you do.

Thank you for having me here.

It's been fun.

Thank you so much to Dr.

Gili Freeman okay, so when we talk about

ghost things, most of the time it's with dates, right?

Yeah.

But it can also be with friends, job interviews, other things.

Have you ever been ghosted or in any sense, have you ever been ghosted?

But I'm also curious, specifically when it comes to love, sex, and relationships.

I would say a friend definitely just

created distance and just stopped speaking to me.

And I'm like, well, what happened?

I mean, I had a sense of what event took place that kind of sparked that behavior,

but no explanation, no clear explanation just kind of happened.

And it is baffling.

I do my best not to judge.

We all are carrying all kinds of

social baggage and trying to just navigate that as best as possible.

And it can hurt, but that builds resilience.

That's a part of socialization.

Like, you have to have some rejections I

can't imagine anyone who's never been rejected.

Who's that person?

Who's that person that's never been

ghosted, never been rejected, never been turned down.

Part of me is like, well, they must be the most perfect person in the world, but in

reality, it's like, that means they just never have put themselves out there ever.

Probably. Right.

You have to at least take a risk.

Whether you're trying to date, whether you're trying to audition, submit for

something, apply for a job, it takes a vulnerability.

You have to have an ability to put yourself out there.

And if you get rejected, I mean, you're going to at some point, right.

Ghosting, in my experience, is like a private affair.

Like, people kind of keep their stories of being rejected to themselves because it

feels shameful or embarrassing or whatever.

And our next guest has dealt with her ghosting in quite the opposite way,

because after she was ghosted, local street artist Amberla created a very, very

public art display on the streets of Philadelphia.

Welcome.

So, Amber, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Introduce yourself?

I've been between Philly and California for a couple of years now.

I'm an artist, and I show my work typically in public places.

As a Philly resident, I have seen your work all over.

I love what you do.

Can you tell us about your relationship to the city of Philadelphia?

Philly definitely has a special place in

my heart, and I grew up in Pennsylvania in the suburbs.

Once I was in middle school, I started

sneaking on the train to the city and, like, going to Hong Kong shows and

basements in West Philly, and I really fell in love with the city, and it was

always my dream to get to live there one day.

I moved there in 99.

You mentioned all your artwork being outside.

I think during the Pandemic, we caught a

glimpse of Philadelphia in many cities around the country.

Right. Completely empty.

No cars, no thing.

Just taking up space.

How would you want to fill up or utilize space?

Moving into the future, what comes to.

Mind right away is more space for performance art.

I just see the street filled with artists of all mediums.

How long have you been a mixed media

artist, and is your art your main form of expression?

I feel like I've been an artist since I

was born, and my mom just let me express myself in all different types of ways, and

it's definitely my main form of expression.

My art is a living, breathing embodiment of my heart.

I find inspiration from the was always

really inspired, actually, by advertisement and magazines.

And, like, one of my series, I use the Magic Eight Ball.

I use the label makers for one of my

series, so I kind of always draw from that time.

Tell us about the haiku that you wrote for a man that you met on hinge.

Yeah.

So I wrote this out on a piece of paper, just, like, in my notebook, and took a

photo of it and sent a photo of it to a man.

It's a haiku.

It's called where'd you go.

You sucked my melons.

We ate meat lover's pizza.

Did you get too full?

Like, where did you go?

I love it.

I absolutely love it.

Obviously, most people view ghosting as a disinterest in them.

How, in your experience, might this not always be the case?

I think there's a lot of different reasons that people go.

That's the time that I think it's important to get curious and maybe, like,

ask questions, because there's other things that could be going on.

One person's openness could lead to

another type of thing maybe they haven't experienced before.

The opportunity to relate with someone that's able to be that open.

Could you give us that backstory?

We went on a couple of really awesome dates.

I hadn't heard from him in, like, I don't know, a couple of days.

I just took it as an opportunity to really think about what could open the moment.

I've been working with a couple of

teachers for the past few years about working with Relieving and Polarity.

Something that I've learned from them is

that there are three stages of relating, and one is thinking of just yourself.

And typically, when you get ghosted, it's like you feel attacked.

You're like, why is this happening to me?

The second stage of relating is thinking of us when you're thinking of both people,

and that would lead to a healthy conversation.

So, like, maybe reaching out to him and saying, hey, could we have a conversation?

Could we drop in? Like I'm curious.

What happened?

And then the third stage of relating, it's kind of considering a higher love when

you're not thinking of just yourself or just the two people.

A collective higher love would be like,

how can I bring love to this moment without any story attached?

And what could be a gift to this moment and open the moment and the gift that can

be found in that situation for the other person?

It's interesting because what I've learned over the past two years is something that

I might consider a gift may not be a gift to that particular person.

So with this man, I really thought about

what would be a gift to him, like, what would open him, and I just kept getting

the hit, like, something humorous bringing light to the situation.

He texted me back immediately, and he was

like, thank you so much for the levity that you're bringing to the situation.

And he was like, I owe you, like, an explanation.

And that opened the moment in such a beautiful way, and I truly was trying to

gift him in that moment and just open things.

I wasn't like, I'm going to write this because I want him to x, Y and Z.

I just was like, how can I be brave and literally choose love over fear?

I mean, it was clearly effective.

I mean, it seems like he probably, among many things, not only appreciated

the humor, but also the bravery to send that.

Because we did have a whole big talk about Ghosting recently, and I haven't really

heard much about people who confront the fact that they're being Ghosted.

And so after this piece, sort of, like,

gained momentum, did other people share that they had shared experiences?

Yeah, totally.

I mean, it's just, like, such a huge part of our culture.

What I really loved is when I shared this in a public space, I did so in

collaboration with an artist named Lisa in the Moon, and her perspective on Ghosting

was more about how we experienced that in the workforce and, like, as artists.

And I loved that she brought that piece to

this because I think that it happens everywhere.

It's not just in relating.

When I shared this tai two that I had written for him in a public space, I asked

him permission first because it really was a gift for him.

And he was so excited.

He's like, I love that you're going to share with the world your practice.

I think it's just such an interesting way to show people we can be different.

We really can choose love in these really creative, different ways.

And I also had another situation with a man where I got ghosted.

We were, like, going on a trip to the

Joshua Tree, and it was all planned and booked, and he ghosted me.

And I made a diorama of the Joshua Tree and made this whole video.

It didn't go over well. Wow.

Okay, so same tactic and not at the same response.

On your Instagram- you have a couple of

posts of our pieces that you have been working on.

One is "what can serve a higher love?

What would I do if I was unafraid of losing love?" What do you mean by this?

What's the story behind these concepts?

One of the teachers that I have gotten to work with for the past two years, his name

is John Winemann, he has brought this whole concept that he'll say, like, what

would you do if you were unafraid of losing love?

And I just feel like we've been programmed

our entire lives to close and protect ourselves.

And we're in this fear because we're told

to act a certain way or an example would be with men, like, playing hard to get.

Don't text him back too soon, like, all these things.

And I'm like, no, if I was unafraid of

losing love in this moment right now, would I text him back?

Being brave with my creativity surrounding

being an artist of love, I love to make everything into art.

And what a fun way to move through this world, especially in relating.

It's fun and interesting and weird and exciting.

I wouldn't want it any other way.

I love the work that you're doing.

I love seeing your art all around Philadelphia.

Amberlynn, if you were right here in front

of us, we would say all these things just the same.

We really appreciate you coming on the So Curious podcast.

So I'm headed to Philly next week and I'm

starting an artist residency at my friend's shop called True Hand Society.

I'm creating a new body of work called

Passing Notes, and they're kind of going to look like when you think of ransom

notes, but they're going to be on the wall.

And the whole idea is that the person walking by is passing these notes, but I'm

actually passing notes to the universe, and they're all going to share my healthy

needs and desires surrounding a partnership.

I'm really excited. Thank you.

I look forward to hopefully getting to see it around Philly.

Yeah, we'll be checking for you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. It's been awesome to talk to you.

Wow, what a great way to wrap up the season.

What has it meant for you to be able to host this season of So Curious.

I mean a lot. But I think

obviously in my career path as a comedian and as a podcaster and an actor.

I feel like so much of what I do in my job.

Whether I'm acting in something that's

about sex, love and relationships or joking about it or whatever it may be.

Or talking about it.

I have so many opinions but so little

actual knowledge on the scientific standpoint.

So genuinely, I feel like this is the closest time ever this podcast is like the

closest I'm ever going to get to going back to school.

I'm actually learning so much by having

these conversations, and it's been I mean, I hope it was beneficial for the

listeners because it was super beneficial for me.

Yeah, absolutely. Shout out to the Franklin Institute.

Oh, yeah.

And Bey, what was your favorite part of the season?

I think it was my joke about pretzels.

That's crazy, because that was my least favorite part.

I'm just kidding.

No, I think for me it was really insightful to see some of the mechanisms

and behaviors and functions and operations of science and seeing how we can learn

from that as individuals, but certainly as community members.

I really love the note about frogs and relating all of that to empathy

and putting yourself in the position of the listener.

That resonates with me as someone who makes music.

Put yourself in the position of the listener.

What are they feeling and what are they

looking for and all these other different things.

And empathy. Empathy, empathy.

You and those frogs are one and the same, basically.

That's pretty cool.

Damn, that was a great answer.

Well, folks, thank you so much for joining

us all summer long in exploring this very relevant and very.

Universal topic.

I really hope that you, as the listeners,

have learned something as much as they and I have.

We will see you next season for more

discoveries in human science and technology from the Franklin Institute.

I'm Kirsten Michelle Cills go science and go birds.

I am the Bul Bey.

Thank you guys for listening this season.

We appreciate you. We really do.

Okay. Okay.

I'm going to miss you.

It's been great hosting the season with you.

Thank you so much for joining the So Curious family.

Thank you for having me.

This has been amazing and it's been real.

Absolutely.

So Curious is presented by the Franklin institute.

And special thanks to the Franklin institute producers Joy Montefusco and Dr.

Jayatri Das.

This podcast is produced by Radio Kismet.

Radio Kismet is Philadelphia's premier podcast production studio.

The managing producer is Emily Charash.

The producer is Liliana Green.

The lead audio engineer and editor is Christian Cderland.

The editors are Lauren DeLuca and Justin Berger.

Head of operations is Christopher Plant.

The science writer is Kira Veyette.