Attitudinal Conflict Research Articles

Attitude Moralization Within Polarized Contexts: An Emotional Value-Protective Response to Dyadic Harm Cues.

Polarization about societal issues involves attitudinal conflict, but we know little about how such conflict transforms into moral conflict. Integrating insights on polarization and psychological value protection, we propose a model that predicts when and how attitude moralization (i.e., when attitudes become grounded in core values) may be triggered and develops within polarized contexts. We tested this model in three experiments (total N = 823) in the context of the polarized Zwarte Piet (blackface) debate in the Netherlands. Specifically, we tested the hypotheses that (a) situational cues to dyadic harm in this context (i.e., an outgroup that is perceived as intentionally inflicting harm onto innocent victims) trigger individuals to moralize their relevant attitude, because of (b) emotional value-protective responses. Findings supported both hypotheses across different regional contexts, suggesting that attitude moralization can emerge within polarized contexts when people are exposed to actions by attitudinal opponents perceived as causing dyadic harm.

Climate-Smart Agriculture in Cascade Minor Irrigation System: Status, Scope and Challenges in Sri Lanka: A Case from Puttlam District

This paper discloses the status, scope, and challenges in familiarizing the climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices to the cascades or terraced tank clusters in the Puttalam district in the Dry Zone (DZ) of Sri Lanka. As a tropical country, Sri Lanka faces many challenges reducing the gap of trade balance in the economy. Reducing food imports can be considered as one of the solutions. Consequently, Sri Lanka is paying high attention to introduce the CSA practices for the DZ while identifying the most productive interventions. Karuwalagaswewa DSD of Puttalam district is one of the driest DSDs in the DZ of Sri Lanka and it has been recognized as a hotspot area to improve the agricultural livelihoods of the farming community residing in the highly vulnerable areas of the DZ. The secondary data of the study have been abstracted from the district and DSD level reports while selected PRA tools, FGDs, participatory map, seasonal calendar, Metrix rankings, and survey methods have been applied for collecting the primary data from Neliwewa, Ihala Ralapanawa, and Rambawewa Terraced Tanks Clusters in the DSD. The study discloses that current agricultural practices of Puttalam district are mostly traditional and there is a high probability to introduce the CSA practices. The major challenge of introducing the modern CSA is intragenerational and intergenerational attitudinal conflict and lack of scientific understandings of modern technologies in CSA. A systematic participatory approach is essential to sustain the CSA practices.

‘Lost, Enfeebled, and Deprived of Its Vital Effect’: Mill’s Exaggerated View of the Relation Between Conflict and Vitality

Abstract Mill thinks our attitudes should be held in a way that’s active and ‘alive’. He believes attitudes that lack these qualities—those held dogmatically, or in unreflective conformity—are inimical to our well-being. This claim then serves as a premiss in his argument for overarching principles of liberty. He argues that attitudinal vitality, in the relevant sense, relies upon people experiencing (and being open to) attitudinal conflict, and that this necessitates a prioritization of personal liberties. I argue that, pace Mill, contestation isn’t required for attitudinal vitality. I describe one species of attitudinal vitality that isn’t reliant upon conflict.

“How Is My English?”: Chinese University Students’ Attitudes Toward China English and Their Identity Construction

Due to the spread of the English language in various domains and the fact that English is used as a global language, researchers and educators have started to rethink the models and aims of English language teaching in different settings. From the World Englishes (WE) perspective, this study investigated the attitudes of Chinese university students toward the localized variety of “China English,” as well as the students’ identity construction and negotiation during their English language learning journey. Data were collected through a questionnaire completed by 190 respondents and interviews conducted with 20 participants. The findings revealed the students’ positive attitudes toward China English and non-conformity to English as a native language (ENL). This further reflected the communicative function of English and the students’ interest in forming a Chinese cultural identity. However, the students also showed self-contradictory attitudes toward China English, as most did not want to be clearly identified as Chinese when using English. The data revealed some important reasons for this attitudinal conflict, including the belief that ENL is the standard form of English, as well as the students’ desire to develop an identity as competent second language learners of English. The findings suggest the importance of increasing awareness of the global spread of English and reforming English curricula and assessment in contexts where local varieties of English are emerging.

Let's not be indifferent about robots: Neutral ratings on bipolar measures mask ambivalence in attitudes towards robots.

Ambivalence, the simultaneous experience of both positive and negative feelings about one and the same attitude object, has been investigated within psychological attitude research for decades. Ambivalence is interpreted as an attitudinal conflict with distinct affective, behavioral, and cognitive consequences. In social psychological research, it has been shown that ambivalence is sometimes confused with neutrality due to the use of measures that cannot distinguish between neutrality and ambivalence. Likewise, in social robotics research the attitudes of users are often characterized as neutral. We assume that this is due to the fact that existing research regarding attitudes towards robots lacks the opportunity to measure ambivalence. In the current experiment (N = 45), we show that a neutral and a robot stimulus were evaluated equivalently when using a bipolar item, but evaluations differed greatly regarding self-reported ambivalence and arousal. This points to attitudes towards robots being in fact highly ambivalent, although they might appear neutral depending on the measurement method. To gain valid insights into people’s attitudes towards robots, positive and negative evaluations of robots should be measured separately, providing participants with measures to express evaluative conflict instead of administering bipolar items. Acknowledging the role of ambivalence in attitude research focusing on robots has the potential to deepen our understanding of users’ attitudes and their potential evaluative conflicts, and thus improve predictions of behavior from attitudes towards robots.

Conflicted Religionists: Measuring Political Backlash on Salient Issues

Scholars have pointed to “political backlash” as a key reason for why people leave religion in the United States. This study adds to the growing body of work that emphasizes backlash to localized conditions, rather than national-level phenomena, by demonstrating the importance of conflict on salient issues within churches. Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey, the author exploits a unique set of items to analyze what he calls “conflicted religionists”—those who experience attitudinal conflict with their churches—and measures conflict on two salient issues: same-sex marriage and abortion. The author finds that there is a considerable proportion of conflicted religionists and that the probability of experiencing conflict varies drastically across different groups in the sample. In line with past work, he demonstrates that experiencing conflict is significantly associated with lower church attendance. He concludes with a discussion of the possible pathways available to conflicted religionists.

Ambivalence and Interpersonal Liking: The Expression of Ambivalence as Social Validation of Attitudinal Conflict.

Literature on attitude similarity suggests that sharing similar attitudes enhances interpersonal liking, but it remains unanswered whether this effect also holds for ambivalent attitudes. In the present research, we shed light on the role attitudinal ambivalence plays in interpersonal liking. Specifically, we examine whether people express ambivalence strategically to generate a positive or negative social image, and whether this is dependent on the attitudinal ambivalence of their perceiver. We test two alternative hypotheses. In line with the attitude-similarity effect, people should express ambivalence toward ambivalent others to enhance interpersonal liking, as sharing ambivalence might socially validate the latter’s experience of attitudinal conflict. On the other hand, people might express more univalence, as ambivalence may drive ambivalent others toward the resolution of their attitudinal conflict, and univalent stances could help to achieve that goal. In two studies (N = 449, 149), people expressed similar attitudes to those of their perceivers, even when the latter experienced attitudinal conflict (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, they composed an essay, the message of which validated their perceiver’s attitudinal conflict (Study 2). In line with these results, we further observe that the more people experienced their ambivalence as conflicting, the more they liked others who similarly experienced attitudinal conflict (Study 1). These findings suggest that the expression of ambivalence can have important interpersonal functions, as it might lead to an enhanced social image when interacting with those coping with attitudinal conflict.

Resolving strategic conflict for environmental conservation of glacial ecosystem: an attitudinal conflict resolution approach

The mitigation and adaptation efforts are underway to combat climate changes. The efforts are also needed for regional cooperation to conserve glacial environment. Strategic and military conflicts have environmental consequences and implications for environmental security. The natural resources are scarce and vulnerable to human activities. Regional cooperation is needed to resolve environmental issues. The military presence at Siachen has imperilled its ecosystem. Prolonged militarisation of the glaciers would further pollute and adversely impact the glacial ecosystem. The resolution of the conflict is indispensable for environmental conservation of the glacial ecosystem. This study is an application of attitude-based negotiation strategy in the graph model to resolve the long-standing Siachen conflict between India and Pakistan by considering possible strategies for the demilitarisation. It concludes that demilitarisation would preserve a spectacular mountain, retain hydrologic balance in the region, save the tremendous resources of these economies and would add to global environmental protection efforts.

Interactive effect of consumer affinity and consumer ethnocentrism on product trust and willingness-to-buy: a moderated-mediation model

PurposeThis study aims to clarify the relationship between two plausible conflicting attitudes in cross-cultural context-consumer affinity and consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and to explore their interactive effect on product trust and willingness-to-buy.Design/methodology/approachA total of 392 usable responses were obtained. Previously validated scales of consumer affinity, CET, product trust and willingness-to-buy were used and showed good reliability. Hierarchical multiple regression and the bootstrapping method were conducted to test the hypotheses.FindingsThis study revealed that consumer affinity is positively associated with product trust, which in turn promotes consumers’ intention to buy products from the affinity country; CET moderates the relationship between consumer affinity and product trust; and CET also moderates the mediating effect of product trust on the relationship between consumer affinity and willingness-to-buy.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, this study helps to explain how consumer affinity boosts willingness-to-buy, and it reveals the type of consumers whose product trust is most notably influenced by their level of ethnocentrism. Second, this study examines the moderating effects of CET on the relationship between consumer affinity and product trust, which can help to identify the situations in which consumer affinity influences product trust most strongly. Third, this study examined the interactive effect of consumer affinity and CET on product trust and its subsequent effect on willingness-to-buy. The findings help to explain the CET’s critical role in the effect of consumer affinity by relating it to the literature of product trust and willingness-to-buy.Practical implicationsGiven the crucial role that consumer affinity plays in improving consumers’ trust in and buying intention for a country’s products, governments, multinational enterprises and international marketers should strategically construct, maintain and magnify a positive national image to the world. This study’s results also clarify that consumer affinity does not conflict with CET; not only can they coexist but also they are positively related. The crucial implication is that CET is not always a barrier to purchasing foreign products.Originality/valueAlthough research interest in consumer attitudinal conflict issues is increasing, the real relationship and interactive effects of plausible conflicting attitudes between consumer affinity and CET remain to be understood. This study bridges a gap between CET and willingness-to-buy by considering the boundary conditions of consumer attitudes toward a specific country (inherent in consumer affinity). Furthermore, this study is, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the first to link consumer affinity with willingness-to-buy through the mediating effect of product trust. These findings are helpful for understanding how consumer affinity positively effects willingness-to-buy.

Wanting other attitudes: Actual–desired attitude discrepancies predict feelings of ambivalence and ambivalence consequences

The experience of attitudinal ambivalence (subjective ambivalence) is important because it predicts key consequences of attitudes (e.g., attitude–behavior correspondence, attitude stability). However, the field's understanding of the antecedents of subjective ambivalence is still developing. We explore an unexamined antecedent of subjective ambivalence. Specifically, we examined discrepancies between participants' actual attitudes and their desired attitudes as antecedents of subjective ambivalence and ambivalence consequences. Six studies using a variety of attitude objects were conducted to test these ideas. The first four studies demonstrated that actual–desired attitude discrepancies predicted subjective ambivalence over its previously documented antecedents. Critically, two additional studies showed that actual–desired attitude discrepancies predicted important consequences of ambivalence. As actual–desired attitude discrepancies increased, participants' attitude–behavior correspondence decreased (Study 5), and desire to reduce attitudinal conflict increased (Study 6). Process data in these latter studies revealed indirect effects through subjective ambivalence that held after controlling for the objective presence of evaluative conflict.

Faultless Disagreement, Assertions and the Affective-Expressive Dimension of Judgments of Taste

Contextualists and assessment relativists neglect the expressive dimension of assertoric discourse that seems to give rise to faultless disagreement. Discourse that generates the intuition makes public an attitudinal conflict, and the affective-expressive dimension of the contributing utterances accounts for it. The FD-phenomenon is an effect of a public dispute generated by a sequence of expressing opposite attitudes towards a salient object or state of affairs, where the protagonists are making an attempt to persuade the other side into joining the other’s camp.

Ideological Consistency and Attitudinal Conf lict

According to attitudinal theorists, justices on the U.S. Supreme Court decide cases largely on political preferences that fall within one dimension of ideology. The focus of this study is to test whether a unidimensional ideological model explains the voting behavior of Canadian Supreme Court justices (1992—1997). The factor-analytic results in three areas of law, two of which have never been examined in this way in Canada, provide substantial evidence of ideological voting. Yet unlike the U.S. justices of the Rehnquist court, Canadian justices exhibit a much higher degree of ideological complexity. These findings call into question the widely held assumption of unidimensional decision making that is in vogue in the U.S. literature today, and they suggest that attitudinal theorists and comparative scholars must be cognizant that multiple dimensions of attitudinal voting might occur in high courts that are not as ideologically polarized as the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Canadian Supreme Court: Attitudinal Conflict in Right to Counsel Cases

Political Science QuarterlyVolume 121, Issue 4 p. 677-697 The Canadian Supreme Court: Attitudinal Conflict in Right to Counsel Cases C.L. OSTBERG, C.L. OSTBERG C.L. OSTBERG is a professor of political science at the University of the Pacific. She has published nearly a dozen articles on the behavior of Canadian Supreme Court justices and is the co-author of a forthcoming book titled Attitudinal Decision Making in the Supreme Court of Canada.Search for more papers by this authorMATTHEW E. WETSTEIN, MATTHEW E. WETSTEIN MATTHEW E. WETSTEIN is a political science professor at Delta College in Stockton, California. He is a former journalist and has published a number of scholarly articles on abortion politics in the United States and on the behavior of Canadian Supreme Court justices.Search for more papers by this author C.L. OSTBERG, C.L. OSTBERG C.L. OSTBERG is a professor of political science at the University of the Pacific. She has published nearly a dozen articles on the behavior of Canadian Supreme Court justices and is the co-author of a forthcoming book titled Attitudinal Decision Making in the Supreme Court of Canada.Search for more papers by this authorMATTHEW E. WETSTEIN, MATTHEW E. WETSTEIN MATTHEW E. WETSTEIN is a political science professor at Delta College in Stockton, California. He is a former journalist and has published a number of scholarly articles on abortion politics in the United States and on the behavior of Canadian Supreme Court justices.Search for more papers by this author First published: 15 February 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2006.tb00586.xCitations: 1 AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume121, Issue4Winter 2006Pages 677-697 RelatedInformation

Hoofing It – On Four or Two Feet? Managing Multi-use Trails and Sites

Horseback tourism in Australia has developed in response to the needs of a predominantly urban-based society, providing tourists with a nature-based experience that is in less contact with the physical environment than those who elect to walk or hike. Such differing modes of transport have created some problems in areas where multiple use of transport forms is permitted, such as the Alpine National Park in Victoria, Australia. Recognising that there is potentially a difference between groups in the parks and their motivations and relationships with the natural environment, research was undertaken to ascertain levels of attitudinal conflict between walkers to horseback tour groups. While social conflict was not as great as anticipated, there were high levels of misinformation regarding the operating permit requirements placed on horseback tours. Also, many of the survey respondents who had negative attitudes towards horseback groups had not actually encountered any themselves. The management implications for the land management agencies include a greater need for planning and operational staff to have an improved understanding of the psychological needs and motivations of visitors to national parks. Education of both land managers and visitors is the key to developing mutually beneficial and effective land management plans.

Sexual Attitudinal Conflict and Sexual Behavior Changes Among Homosexual HIV-Positive Men

In a German-Swedish coowrative study the HIVa-daptation process, its psychological sequelae and the psychosexual dilemma of homosexual HIV-positive men were investigated. The focus of this article is to highlight conflict solutions of-attitudinal conflict related to sexual behavior changes. The findings indicate that unprotected sex as well as giving up sexual behaviors that are still positively loaded are two examples of conflict solutions. It should also be noted that the conflict is at work even when the individual practices are protected or "safer" sexual behaviors. The results indicate that only referring to sexual behavior data would underestimate the potential of so-called "relapses" to unprotected sexual behaviors.

The effects of economic development and modernization in resolving traditional-modern attitudinal conflict

Experts point out that development changes societies in ways so profound that they cannot be anticipated by the participants in the experience. This article analyses the effects of rapid economic development on traditional life styles and the resolution of ensuing attitudinal conflict. Previous studies of traditional-modern (T-M) problems encountered in the process of modernization are reviewed and modernization theories and methodological problems are discussed. Evidence is presented for a T-M model based on studies in West Africa, Australian aborigines, Hong Kong Chinese, Japanese, and Alaskan Eskimo, identifying certain independent variables which are held to influence modernization: the nature of traditional ecologies, e.g., agricultural, pastoral, or hunting/fishing societies, the severity of socialization and the nature of traditional authority systems. The analysis confirmed that development does change societies in profound ways, uprooting cultures, altering environments and modifying individuals physically and psychologically. However, it was also postulated, based on T-M research, that hunting, fishing and the main pastoral societies are generally more highly resistant to change, do not want change and may be better off without it. In contrast, most agricultural and mixed agricultural-pastoral societies are not only more susceptible to modern change, they can usually derive the most benefit from it and also in most cases want change.

Scaling Chinese Traditional-Modern Attitudes and the GSR Measurement of "Important" Versus "Un-Important" Chinese Concepts

This paper is concerned with theoretical and scaling problems involved in the development and research application of the Chinese T-M Scale, used to test the Traditional-Modern consistency theory of attitude change. T-M theory considers that individuals exposed to conflicting traditional and modern cognitions resolve traditional-modern conflict either by the development of compromise attitudes or by alternate modes of inconsistency reduction. The compromise attitudes formed as a result of this process, are held to be more adaptive for the satisfactory adjustment of individuals in situations of rapid biological and social change. A model of susceptibility to T-M attitude change is also presented, together with a GSR experiment designed to test certain aspects of T-M theory in the laboratory. In the GSR experiment it was found as expected that more "important" Chinese traditional-modern concepts elicited a significantly higher level of GSR arousal in response to attitude change in the direction of ieer-group pressure, while a high degree of unresolved attitudinal conflict was also found among these more "important" concepts. These peer-group pressures also resulted in significantly greater change occurring among these more "important" Confucian concepts in a traditional direction, while the "un-important' concupts changed in a modern direction.

Attitude change and conflict among australian aborigines

The effects of urbanization on Aboriginal attitude change and unresolved attitudinal conflict were studied using 3 Aboriginal samples selected for varying degrees of exposure to modern influences. These were a semi-traditional Arunta sample, a semi-modern Wallaga Lake sample, and a modem Sydney sample. The study was carried out in terms of T-W consistency theory. An Aboriginal version of the T-W Scale was developed to test the main hypotheses which were generally confirmed. One of the main conclusions drawn was that the extremely permissive Aboriginal socialization process and lack of political stratification has tended to limit the degree of acceptance of modern attitudes and values and may also tend to influence levels of achievement motivation.