U of O study sheds light on the psychology of ‘mean girls’ [Video]

A new study from the University of Ottawa is diving into how young women handle being socially excluded — and shedding new light on the “mean girl” stereotype.

The study, which monitored the brain waves of dozens of young women playing a ball-passing video game, found that their pain was heightened when they were rejected by other women perceived to be less attractive.

Lead author Tracy Vaillancourt has spent her career studying women’s social dynamics, and the University of Ottawa professor’s past research had shown that young women were afforded social status based on how attractive and cruel they were.

That led Vaillancourt and her team to suspect participants in her latest study would be more “hurt” by rejection from these kinds of women — akin to the dynamics played out in popular films like Mean Girls — than by women without those features.

“We went in thinking that it would be attractive, unfriendly women that would elicit the …