Rejection is part of academic life. There — it is said. But does that make it easier? No.
Does it become painless after thirty years? Not really. It still stings and still disrupts sleep. It still lingers in the bloodstream longer than it should. There is good reason for this.
Psychological research shows that social rejection activates many of the same neural systems associated with physical pain[1]. Rejection is not just cognitive feedback; it is experienced as social threat. It strikes at belonging, competence and identity. That is why it feels visceral. That is why recovery takes time. And recovery time is rarely acknowledged in academic workload models.
Why It Hurts More Than It “Should”
Mark Leary [2]and others have shown that rejection commonly evokes not just disappointment, but hurt feelings, shame, embarrassment and anger. The precise mix varies from person to person, but it is rarely neutral. We do not merely lose a submission. We feel exposed.
In academia, our ideas are extensions of ourselves. A paper rejected is not just text declined — it is effort dismissed, judgement passed, and sometimes identity threatened. And some rejections resonate more deeply because they intersect with existing sensitivities.
When It Hits Where You Are Vulnerable
My doctoral work challenged an established glacial paradigm. I was young, impatient and dyslexic. The early papers were savaged by an entrenched intellectual community. Some of that criticism was deserved; some of it was doctrinal defence. But what cut deepest were comments that exposed my vulnerability around language. Rejection is amplified when it collides with insecurity.
The psychology literature calls this rejection sensitivity[3]: the tendency to interpret feedback through the lens of anticipated threat. Two academics can receive identical reviews. One reads “revise and resubmit.” The other reads “you are not good enough.” At the time, I read the latter.
Those rejections came close to derailing me. In hindsight they also forged resilience. The work was eventually published. The paradigm shifted, but the pain, however, remains oddly durable. Rejection leaves its scar.
Anger, Rumination and the Urge to Fire Back
There is another dimension that academics rarely admit: anger[4]. I am not naturally combative, but I am fiery under the surface. As a younger academic I was prone to firing off rapid, ill-considered emails. Discord unsettles me; I want it resolved even when I was the cause. Rejection often triggered that urgency in me. Experimental research shows that rejection can increase aggressive impulses — not necessarily overt aggression, but the desire to retaliate, to correct, to restore status. In academia this might look like: drafting a scathing reply to reviewers; withdrawing a paper in anger; disengaging from a journal; resolving never to cite “that person” again
These impulses are understandable. They are also rarely helpful. Over time, philosophy replaces fury — at least partially. The 48-hour rule has saved me more than once, but I still really struggle with. Time dulls the sting just enough to separate emotion from strategy but it can be a fight not to hit back immediately[5].
When the Stakes Are High
Some rejections carry more weight than others. A reviewer once mocked a spelling error in a major grant — “Alkali Fat” instead of “Alkali Flat.” The mistake was mine; the ridicule was unnecessary. The dismissal felt personal, not scholarly. And it still irks me to this day.
More recently, a review implied that my wife and research team had failed to learn properly from me. The tone felt sexist. We were angry enough to withdraw the paper rather than fight it. Complaints require energy; sometimes you simply do not have it even though you know you should.
And then there was the Tibet handprint paper — months of work, field returns, reshaped arguments. The editorial encouragement followed by what felt like hostile, perhaps even racially tinged, reviews. The paper eventually found a home elsewhere, but the loss of time — and the missed prestige for young Chinese collaborators whose careers depended on the paper — lingered and still lingers.
Rejection hurts more when: the time investment was high; the career stakes are high; others’ futures are implicated; identity is attached. The greater the emotional and professional investment, the sharper the grief.
Grief, Identity and Iteration
Grief theory [6]provides a useful metaphor. A cherished version of the paper dies. The imagined impact vanishes. The future you briefly inhabited dissolves.
Denial >> Anger >> Bargaining >> Resignation>>Acceptance.
Not always in order. Not always fully. But recognisable. And yet, here is the uncomfortable truth: rejection is not aberration in academia. It is part of its DNA. The peer review system, imperfect as it is, filters, shapes and slows ideas. It also protects orthodoxy. There is evidence that highly novel work can be penalised because it challenges dominant paradigms. “Me-too” work often encounters less resistance. If you want to minimise pain, write incrementally within accepted frames.
But if research is vocation — if it is about contribution rather than compliance — then challenging established work is unavoidable. Tempered radicalism carries risk.
The Hidden Cost: Recovery Time
What concerns me most now is not the rejection itself but the recovery lag[7].
How many days are lost to rumination?
How many mornings begin with avoidance?
How much momentum stalls?
We talk about character — how you respond to failure. There is truth in that. But the literature suggests a more precise formulation: resilience is not about suppressing emotion; it is about shortening recovery time. The question is not “did it hurt?” The question is “how long before you move again?”
The most productive researchers I know are not those who avoid rejection. They are those who metabolise it quickly. They extract the actionable, discard the performative hostility, and resubmit. Momentum restores identity and in truth the rhythm of research can really help recovery. To get on with something else, set the problem aside for a little while, and return to it when you are calmer. Trite it may seem, but it does work.
The Double Bind
Here is the paradox. The more you invest in your work — intellectually and emotionally — the more rejection hurts. But if you do not invest, you produce safe work. Safe work rarely changes fields. So we are caught in a double bind:
Invest deeply and risk pain.
Invest lightly and risk mediocrity.
There is no painless route to meaningful contribution.
Character, Yes — But Also Craft
In Edwardian Britian character was how you deal with failure. Perhaps. It is not really PC these days to cite Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”, so I refer you as well to Joni Mitchell’s [8]sung version as well. Here are a few lines that hold truth in our current context:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
Perversely, and I don’t really know why I find comfort in this, rejection is a test of your commitment to your vocation as a researcher. But perhaps more helpfully rejection is also a craft issue. Craft involves: waiting before responding; separating tone from substance; identifying the kernel of truth; revising decisively; and resubmitting strategically.
Rejection is not the opposite of success. It is part of the process that produces it.
And the hard truth despite all these fine words is that it does not get any easier with time. You grow a bit more philosophical – yes. You learn patterns and recognise defensive reviewing when you see it. But when the stakes are high — when identity, time, collaborators and ambition converge — it still hurts.
That hurt is evidence that the work matters to you. If research were merely career, rejection would be inconvenience. Because it is vocation, rejection feels personal. The task is not to avoid that feeling. The task is to move again despite it. Momentum, once restored, is the quiet antidote to despair.
[1] Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292. Landmark study showing social rejection activates neural regions associated with physical pain.
[2] Leary, M. R. (2015). Emotional responses to interpersonal rejection. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 17(4), 435–441. Differentiates hurt, shame, embarrassment, anger; explains why rejection threatens belonging and status.
[3] Downey, G., & Feldman, S. I. (1996). Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(6), 1327–1343. Introduced rejection sensitivity model; highly applicable to academic identity threat.
[4] Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., Tice, D. M., & Stucke, T. S. (2001). If you can’t join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1058–1069. Experimental evidence that rejection increases aggressive responses.
[5] Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101. Neff, K. D., Hsieh, Y.-P., & Dejitterat, K. (2005). Self-compassion, achievement goals, and coping with academic failure. Self and Identity, 4(3), 263–287. Shows self-compassion predicts adaptive coping after academic setbacks.
[6] Guthrie, S., et al. (2023). The emotional impact of grant rejection. (Open University report and related scholarship.) Frames grant rejection in terms of grief and emotional labour.
[7] Kowalczuk, M. K., et al. (2022). Experiences of manuscript rejection among academics. (Qualitative work documenting emotional impact and coping strategies.) Demonstrates rejection’s psychological and productivity effects.
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Xwo4V6AcY
(C) Matthew Bennett, 2026.
