Kipling D. Williams

Cyberball

Thanks to Purdue's Department of Psychological Sciences
and the
Australian Research Council
for their assistance in funding Cyberball updates

CLICK below for a free download of Cyberball (three versions to choose from), a virtual ball-toss game that can be used for research on ostracism, social exclusion, or rejection.

This program was produced by Blair Jarvis of Empirisoft (www.empirisoft.com), and was first created by Christopher Cheung and Wilma Choi as part of their honours theses under the supervision of Kip Williams, and resulted in the following publication:

     Williams, K. D., Cheung, C. K. T., & Choi, W. (2000). CyberOstracism: Effects of being ignored over the Internet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 748-762.

In that article, we investigated the effects of ostracism on four fundamental needs (belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningful existence), and mood, and on subsequent conformity levels.

We also describe this program fully in the in press article:

     Williams, K. D., & Jarvis, B. (in press). Cyberball: A program for use in research on ostracism and interpersonal acceptance. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers.

The ball-toss game is a virtual analogue to the face-to-face ball-toss game employed by Williams (Williams & Sommer, 1997; see also "Ostracism: The Power of Silence," Guilford Press, 2001).

It is highly flexible. It can be programmed to employ 3 or 4 person ball tossing, with or without names or labels, and with or without pictures (these latter variables are good for ingroup/outgroup manipulations). Ostracism can occur immediately or after any number of throws. You can determine the number of throws, whether the participant is included, ostracized, included by some but not others, etc.

Data are collected on the computer on Excel files that you can paste into SPSS or other statistical programs.

This game stands alone and is not an Internet game, although it appears to be. Participants can only play the game from the computer on which it is downloaded but it has the appearance of an Internet browser. Thus, participants can be led to believe that they are playing with other people in the same lab, at other universities, or from anywhere in the world.

Download here for Cyberball v.3 (the current version, available for both PC and Mac platforms)

Access to Prior Versions:

Download here for Cyberball v.1 (the typical one used for short-term between-S manipulations, PC only)

Download here for Cyberball v.2 (especially useful for within-S manipulations across longer time periods, PC only)

Comments or questions are welcome.

Published articles using Cyberball

last updated - June 20, 2007