Here, too, exclusion distorted network perceptions; people who had been left out of a group activity saw others as enjoying greater social connected ness than was the case, as well as more connectedness than others who had nothad this experience. Whereas false negatives did not differ by social experience condition, reporting of false positives did. This patternindicates that exclusion does not simply interfere with social per-ception, but it does so in ways that lead people to overestimatenetwork density.Results from both studies support our primaryproposition—social exclusion experiences systematically undercutpeople’s ability to decode the social network structures that arepresent in novel social settings. And, if getting it wrong means thatpeople misconstrue network opportunity, then these errors arelikely to undermine people’s effective network exploitation.Theoretical, methodological, and practical contributionsOur work builds on research that examines the factors thatshape network perceptual accuracy (Casciaro, 1998; Janicik andLarrick, 2005)