Subjective Ambivalence Research Articles

Don't let the facts ruin a good story: The effect of vivid reviews on attitude ambivalence and its coping mechanisms

Purchasing decisions are increasingly based on reviews by fellow consumers which often consist of positive and negative evaluations about the product (i.e. valence-inconsistency). We tested how the vividness of these reviews affects individuals' attitude ambivalence towards the product and their strategies to cope with this ambivalence. We hypothesized that reading vivid and valence-inconsistent reviews would lead to increased awareness of opposing features of attitudes towards the product (i.e. increased simultaneous accessibility) as compared to reading less vivid valence-inconsistent reviews. If this is indeed the case, individuals should feel more conflicted towards the attitude object (i.e. increased subjective ambivalence) and should be motivated to reduce it by using ambivalence-coping strategies, specifically (a) processing additional information that is congruent with their initial attitude and (b) delaying their decision. These hypotheses were mostly supported across five experiments. The experiments included manipulations of valence-inconsistent information between reviews and within a review including three preregistered studies (Ns = 247, 396, 701, 433, 313, respectively).

Where does moral conviction fit?: A factor analytic approach examining antecedents to attitude strength

Research and theory has suggested that moral conviction is distinct from other attitude strength antecedents. Yet, many attitude features conceptually overlap with features considered definitional to moral conviction. In order to place moral conviction within the broader landscape of attitude properties, we examined the factor analytic structure of a set of attitude strength antecedents that seemed conceptually related to moral basis. Participants reported attitudes toward the topic of GMOs (Study 1) or toward a topic they identified as important to them (Studies 2–6) and various subjective properties of their attitudes. We also examined the ability of each attitude feature to predict advocacy intentions (Studies 3–6). In Studies 1–3, exploratory factor analyses revealed that the various strength antecedents reflected a two-factor structure that differentiated properties relating to an attitude's embeddedness in one's core values from properties reflecting a consistency or entrenchment in an attitude. In Studies 4–6, confirmatory factor analyses determined that, in addition to the over-arching two-factor structure, including “minor factors” reflecting each attitude property further improved model fit. We therefore propose a hybrid model, wherein the various attitude properties form an over-arching two-factor structure in which each major factor includes additional “minor” constructs. Across studies, moral basis loaded highly on an embeddedness factor along with values basis (all studies), importance (Studies 4–6), affective and cognitive meta-bases (Studies 5–6), centrality, and extremity (Study 6). The consistency factor was composed of subjective ambivalence (all studies), correctness, clarity (Studies 1–4), attitude-relevant knowledge (Studies 4–6), and certainty (Studies 5–6). Embeddedness and consistency (as latent variables) each independently predicted advocacy intentions. These findings provide insight into how moral basis relates to a broad set of attitude features and has implications for how future work might define moral conviction.

Meta-analytic evidence for ambivalence resolution as a key process in effortless self-control

Self-control is a central construct in understanding human behavior and wellbeing, and has a significant impact on outcomes in several areas such as health, wellbeing, academic performance, and interpersonal relationships. However, underlying mechanisms of self-control, and particularly effortless self-control, remain underexposed. Recent work using mouse tracking techniques has shed new light on these issues and found that self-control is related to ambivalence associated with self-control dilemmas, both in magnitude and resolution. Using a meta-analytical approach, the current research examines whether these initial findings, suggesting that the resolution of ambivalent conflicts is a key ingredient of effortless self-control, are robust. Combining two studies from Gillebaart, Schneider, & De Ridder (2016), and five novel studies, we examined whether self-control influenced the magnitude of ambivalence conflicts (magnitude hypothesis) and the process of its resolution (process hypothesis). Self-reports of objective and subjective ambivalence conflicts were combined with a mouse tracking paradigm to tap into these different aspects. Our analyses replicate previous findings and showed a robust small to medium large effect: Higher self-control was associated with less self-reported conflict, faster conflict resolution, and earlier moment of maximum conflict. Notably, on an implicit level, conflicts emerged in equal magnitude regardless of self-control level. Extending previous work, self-control did not only play a role in food-related dilemmas but also in resolving conflict with regards to different societal topics. These results support the notion of ambivalent conflict resolution as an underlying mechanism of effortless self-control and contribute to a new perspective of self-control going beyond effort and inhibition.

Perceived Knowledge Moderates the Relation Between Subjective Ambivalence and the "Impact" of Attitudes: An Attitude Strength Perspective.

Previous work has reliably demonstrated that when people experience more subjective ambivalence about an attitude object, their attitudes have less impact on strength-related outcomes such as attitude-related thinking, judging, or behaving. However, previous research has not considered whether the amount of perceived knowledge a person has about the topic might moderate these effects. Across eight studies on different topics using a variety of outcome measures, the current research demonstrates that perceived knowledge can moderate the relation between ambivalence and the impact of attitudes on related thinking, judging, and behaving. Although the typical Attitude × Ambivalence effect emerged when participants had relatively high perceived knowledge, this interaction did not emerge when participants were lower in perceived knowledge. This work provides a more nuanced view of the effects of subjective ambivalence on attitude impact and highlights the importance of understanding the combined impact of attitude strength antecedents.

Ambivalence toward healthy and unhealthy food and moderation by individual differences in restrained eating

Food may be a particularly ambivalent stimulus, as it may be associated with high feelings of both positivity and negativity (objective ambivalence), in addition to feelings of conflict (subjective ambivalence). In this study we examine objective and subjective ambivalence toward healthy and unhealthy food, as well as nonfood objects. We show that food (particularly unhealthy food) images do elicit higher ambivalence than nonfood images, particularly due to increased negative feelings. Furthermore, individuals higher in eating restraint showed increased objective and subjective ambivalence to healthy food, suggesting that food may be a highly arousing, conflicting stimulus for constant dieters. Implications for treatment of eating disorders and for future research on food consumption are discussed.

An Examination of Whether Mindfulness Can Predict the Relationship Between Objective and Subjective Attitudinal Ambivalence.

Ambivalence is a mixed reaction toward an attitudinal object. Ambivalence is often viewed as aversive and people are motivated to reduce it. However, the presence of both strong positive and negative attitudes toward an object (objective ambivalence; OA) does not always lead to consciously experienced conflicted and torn feelings (subjective ambivalence; SA) or psychological discomfort. We hypothesized that the way people think about their inner experience can affect whether ambivalent attitudes lead to increased conflicted feelings. In five studies, we examined whether mindfulness predicts the relationship between objective and subjective ambivalence. We predicted that the acceptance aspect of mindfulness would attenuate the relationship between OA and SA, based on the idea that acceptance makes people more tolerant and less judgmental toward their inner states in general (and OA in particular). Although some findings across five studies were consistent with the prediction showing that acceptance attenuated the OA–SA relationship, other findings were not and even showed that acceptance strengthened the OA–SA relationship. A meta-analysis of the interaction effect across all studies failed to find support for predictions (r = -0.036 and 95% CI [-0.087; 0.022]). We discuss possible reasons for these mixed findings, and the implications of these studies.

Feeling torn and fearing rue: Attitude ambivalence and anticipated regret as antecedents of biased information seeking

Theoretical work on attitudinal ambivalence suggests that anticipated regret may play a role in causing awareness of contradictions that subsequently induce a feeling of an evaluative conflict. In the present paper we empirically examined how the anticipation of regret relates to the association between the simultaneous presence of contradictory cognitions and emotions (objective ambivalence), and the evaluative conflict associated with it (subjective ambivalence), in the context of decision-making. Across three studies (Ns=204,127,244), manipulating both objective ambivalence and regret, we consistently found that when a dichotomous ambivalent choice had to be made, (objectively) ambivalent attitude holders for whom feelings of anticipated regret were made salient reported higher levels of subjective-attitude ambivalence than participants in the other conditions. Moreover, in Studies 2 and 3 we found that the effect of anticipated regret on subjective ambivalence had consequences on information processing. Specifically, anticipating regret made ambivalent participants search for attitude-congruent information. This effect was mediated by the increase in subjective ambivalence. This work provides the first empirical evidence for the role of regret in the association between objective-and- subjective attitude ambivalence, and its consequences.

Understanding intentions to purchase bio-based products: The role of subjective ambivalence

This article aims to explore whether subjective ambivalence increases the understanding of consumers' intentions to buy bio-based products. Subjective ambivalence is the aversive feeling that accompanies evaluations containing both negative and positive elements. Two studies (N = 1851) in six European countries show that subjective ambivalence increases the explained variance beyond vested exploratory variables: emotions and variables of the theory of planned behaviour. This finding implies that the intention to purchase bio-based products is based on more than cognitive deliberations or emotions; it is also associated with an aversive feeling of subjective ambivalence. Additionally, this article divides attitudes into risks and benefits associated with bio-based products and thereby shows that subjective ambivalence strengthens the association between risks and intentions and not that between benefits and intentions. Highly ambivalent consumers are more sensitive to risks than less ambivalent consumers, whereas for the sensitivity to benefits there are no differences between individuals with high and low ambivalence. In conclusion, to understand public opinion regarding bio-based products, it is important to comprehensively monitor and understand ambivalence.

Valence asymmetries in attitude ambivalence.

Existing models of ambivalence suggest that as the number of conflicting reactions (e.g., attitude components) increases, so too does the experience of ambivalence. Interestingly, though, these models overwhelmingly assume that this relationship is independent of valence. Across 3 studies we observe that this effect is in fact heavily influenced by 2 established valence asymmetries: positivity offset (baseline positive reactions even in the absence of positive information) and negativity bias (greater impact of negative reactions than positive reactions). Consistent with positivity offset, we observe that subjective ambivalence is greater when people have univalent negative rather than univalent positive attitudes. However, as conflicting information is acquired, subjective ambivalence rises more quickly when that information is negative rather than positive. The latter effect is consistent with negativity bias and suggests that although people feel more conflicted when they have only negative (vs. only positive) reactions, they also feel more conflicted when they have mostly positive (vs. mostly negative) reactions. Our investigation also uncovers an interesting consequence of these asymmetries: When people have mixed reactions, they do not experience maximum ambivalence at equal levels of positivity and negativity, as suggested by canonical ambivalence theory. Rather, subjective ambivalence peaks when positive reactions outnumber negative reactions. These effects are found to have downstream consequences for other dimensions of attitude strength. (PsycINFO Database Record

On the Attitudinal Consequences of Being Mindful: Links Between Mindfulness and Attitudinal Ambivalence.

A series of studies examined whether mindfulness is associated with the experience of attitudinal ambivalence. Studies 1A and 1B found that mindful individuals expressed greater comfort holding ambivalent views and reported feeling ambivalent less often. More mindful individuals also responded more positively to feelings of uncertainty (as assessed in Study 1B). Study 2 replicated these effects and demonstrated that mindful individuals had lower objective and subjective ambivalence across a range of attitude objects but did not differ in attitude valence, extremity, positivity/negativity, strength, or the need to evaluate. Study 3 showed that the link between greater ambivalence and negative affect was buffered by mindfulness, such that there was no link between the amount of ambivalence and negative affect among more mindful individuals. The results are discussed with respect to the benefits of mindfulness in relation to ambivalence and affect.

Reducing Subjective Ambivalence by Creating Doubt

Ambivalence, the presence of positive and negative reactions toward an object, typically involves the subjective experience of conflict. We investigate the role that the perceived validity of each side of an ambivalent attitude plays in producing subjective ambivalence (SA). Consistent with the metacognitive model of attitudes, we demonstrated that SA is reduced when people doubt either the positive or the negative reactions. Thus, inducing doubt (in one side) can reduce SA. We further explored whether viewing both sides as invalid would lead to relatively low or to relatively high levels of SA. Consistent with the idea that equivalent perceived validity increases the difficulty of ambivalence reduction, when both sides were doubted, conflict was as high as when both sides were validated.

Is subjective ambivalence toward gays a modern form of bias?

Theoretically, modern racism and sexism are characterized by ambivalence. We directly examined the consequence of being higher in subjective ambivalence toward gays (i.e. attitudes that feel “torn”) with regard to gay rights support. In Study 1, greater subjective ambivalence was associated with more negative attitudes (and not more positive attitudes), more ideological opposition to gays, more negative intergroup emotions, and less gay rights support. In Study 2, less opposition to gay bullying was predicted by: (a) greater subjective ambivalence (through lower intergroup empathy); and (b) experimentally-salient bullying justification norms (through lower collective guilt). These effects held controlling for Attitudes toward Lesbians and Gay Men (i.e., traditional negative attitudes). Although not overtly negative, individual differences in subjective ambivalence tap a unique, subtle, and less objectionable form of bias, consistent with aversive racism and justification–suppression frameworks of explaining modern biases.

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.

“I feel recycling matters… sometimes”: The negative influence of ambivalence on waste separation among teenagers

This study uses the theory of reasoned action to examine how measures of subjective and indirect ambivalence affect the separation of paper and packaging for recycling. The relationships between recycling beliefs and recycling attitudes and between recycling intention and behavior are stronger for lower levels of subjective ambivalence. Indirect ambivalence moderates the relationship between ecological self-identity and recycling behavior in the same way. One exception is that the relationship between recycling intention and behavior is stronger for higher levels of indirect ambivalence. Moreover, indirect ambivalence mediates the effect of subjective ambivalence both on recycling intention and behavior. However, this mediation is imperfect, which suggests that there is a need to measure the two types of ambivalence when studying conservation practices.

The Moderating Role of Self‐Monitoring on the Interpersonal Aspects of Attitude Ambivalence

Extant research has found a relation between holding conflicting attitudes with a familiar person (interpersonal discrepancy) and subjective attitude ambivalence. In 2 studies, we investigated the role of interpersonal discrepancy in the experience of attitude ambivalence as a function of self-monitoring and level of liking of the other person. Building on balance theory, we proposed and found that high (vs. low) self-monitors feel most comfortable when they are in agreement with liked (vs. disliked) others. In Study 1, 80 university students revealed that when the significant other is a parent, high self-monitors feel more subjective ambivalence when there is more interpersonal discrepancy. In Study 2, 37 university students reported their feelings of subjective ambivalence when considering the interpersonal discrepancy between liked (vs. disliked) familiar people. Again, it was high self-monitors who were most susceptible to increased feelings of subjective ambivalence, particularly for discrepancies between their own attitude and the attitude of liked others. Taken together, our 2 studies broaden our understanding of the interpersonal foundations of subjective ambivalence by suggesting that they may depend on personality differences and the nature of the social relationship.

Self-Ambivalence and Resistance to Subtle Self-Change Attempts

Recent research has demonstrated the malleability of self-views to subtle situational influence but has not uncovered features of the self-concept representation that make it susceptible to such change. Using research on attitude ambivalence as a foundation, the current article predicted that the self would be most likely to respond to a subtle change induction when the targeted self-beliefs were objectively ambivalent (e.g., possessed both positive and negative features). Using self-esteem conditioning (Experiment 1) and outgroup stereotype priming (Experiment 2), it was found that people were more susceptible to subtle change inductions as objective self-ambivalence increased. Notably, the consistency between dominant self-views (positive or negative) and the change induction did not influence these results. These effects held for objective ambivalence, but not subjective ambivalence, and only when the objective ambivalence measure was relevant to the change induction. Mechanisms of the observed moderation and the implications of self-ambivalence for understanding self-change are discussed.

Ambivalence toward a country and consumers’ willingness to buy emblematic brands: The differential predictive validity of objective and subjective ambivalence measures on behavior

Previous country-of-origin research has treated opinions of countries as either positive or negative, even though people may in fact hold conflicting opinions about countries. The extant literature on ambivalence suggests that the coexistence of positive and negative opinions of a country should increase avoidance of objects associated with that country, above and beyond the effects of mere positivity or negativity. Data collected from French consumers who varied in degrees of ambivalence toward the US reveal that ambivalence, measured indirectly through consumers’ coexisting positive and negative views, is indeed negatively related to consumers’ willingness to buy emblematic American brands. The findings highlight the latent nature of ambivalence, the difficulty of assessing the subjective experience of the ambivalence state, and the importance and practicality of using indirect measures.

The Effect of Perceived Value and Subjective Ambivalence on Customer Satisfaction and Web-site Loyalty

The Effect of Perceived Value and Subjective Ambivalence on Customer Satisfaction and Web-site Loyalty

The Political Consequences of Ambivalence: The Case of Democratic Reform in Hong Kong

Recent research has shown that attitudinal ambivalence has important implications on political attitudes and behavior. The concept holds one of the keys to understanding complicated and seemingly contradictory opinions of the public. This article examines ambivalence in public opinion regarding democratic reform in Hong Kong. Analysis of a representative survey (N = 600) shows that common citizens indeed have a significant degree of ambivalence toward the government's political reform bill proposed in 2005. Regarding consequences, objective ambivalence is shown to have greater predictive power than subjective ambivalence. The former relates negatively to attitude extremity and weakens the attitude–behavior linkage. However, contrary to the usual finding in the literature, objective ambivalence also relates positively to protest participation intention. The theoretical and social implications of the findings are discussed.

The Perceived Informational Basis of Attitudes: Implications for Subjective Ambivalence

Three studies tested the hypothesis that when people receive persuasive messages, their perceptions of the information on which they base their attitudes can determine feelings of subjective ambivalence. Across studies, it is shown that when elaboration (e.g., need for cognition, personal relevance) is high, people have more subjective ambivalence when they perceive that they have based their attitudes on the source of a message rather than the arguments contained in that message. When elaboration is low, this effect is reversed. These findings suggest that people can assess the informational basis of their attitudes and that these assessments influence feelings of attitude ambivalence.