Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ)

Eighteen everyday situations make up the questionnaire, each involving a request of someone important: asking a friend for a favor, asking a partner to move in, asking parents for help, approaching someone at a party. For each, the person rates how concerned or anxious they would be about the response and how likely it is that the other person would agree. Rejection sensitivity is the combination of the two: anxiously expecting rejection where it may or may not come.

Downey and Feldman (1996) developed the measure to study how expectations of rejection, often rooted in earlier experiences of rejection, lead people to perceive it readily in ambiguous behavior and to react to it intensely. Their work drew on social-cognitive models of personality, in which stable patterns arise from how people interpret and respond to particular kinds of situation.

For each scenario, the concern rating is multiplied by the expected likelihood of rejection, and the products are averaged. Higher scores describe stronger anxious expectations of rejection; lower scores describe greater confidence that others will respond favorably. The score describes a tendency, not a fixed trait, and it can shift as relationships change.

The questionnaire is used in research on relationships, depression and social anxiety, and in therapy to understand reactions to perceived slights. On this site, the Experiences in Close Relationships Short Form (ECR-SF) measures attachment anxiety and avoidance, the Need to Belong Scale measures the motivation for social connection, and the Interpersonal Circumplex (IPC-32) describes interpersonal style.

These findings indicate that the RSQ is linked with past experiences of rejection from parents as well as relational orientations characterized by fears of rejection and interpersonal dysfunction (for a review, see Erozkan, 2009). In addition, the RSQ has shown a significant negative correlation with daily clarity of self-concept (r = -.33) as well as positive links (r =.38) with depressed mood (Ayduk, Gyurak, & Luerssen, 2009). Ayduk et al. (2008) also demonstrated that the RSQ was linked with an increased likelihood of Borderline PD features and decreased executive control.

Earlier studies have also shown good construct validity for the RSQ (e.g., Downey & Feldman, 1996). For instance, Downey & Feldman (1996) demonstrated that the RSQ was related to the tendency to construe ambiguous social behaviors as intentional acts of rejection.

“You ask someone in class if you can borrow his/her notes. How concerned or anxious would you be about whether or not the person would want to lend you his/her notes?”

“He/she would willingly lend me his/her notes.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Each scenario pairs a rejection-concern rating with an outcome-expectancy rating; the product is averaged across scenarios to yield a rejection-sensitivity score.