Inclusion, Exclusion and Flourishing: The Role of Social Pain and Related Emotions

Abstract

This paper argues that human flourishing is not merely individual but interrelational. While recent debates emphasise positive affect or individual capacities in well-being, they tend to underexplore the regulatory role of negatively valenced experiences. Focusing on social pain—the distress associated with social exclusion and disrupted social bonds—I draw on neuroscientific and psychological evidence showing its affective overlap with physical pain as a shared alarm system. I argue that this system signals threats to relational conditions fundamental to agency and well-being. On this view, social pain plays a central regulatory role, parallel to that of physical pain: it tracks social damage, motivates responses primarily oriented towards repair and reintegration, and operates with social and moral emotions that shape norm-sensitive interactions. On this basis, I defend a conception of flourishing as essentially interrelational, in which the maintenance and restoration of social inclusion are structurally central to well-being and moral agency.