When Objective Ambivalence Predicts Subjective Ambivalence

An Affect–Cognition Matching Perspective

Bibliographic Data

ID21453479
AuthorsWei Jie Reiner Ng (0000-0002-8223-2563, National University of Singapore, Singapore, corresponding author), Ya Hui Michelle See (0000-0002-6772-982X, National University of Singapore, Singapore), Laura E Wallace (0000-0002-2298-7569, George Mason University)
Year2023
Volume49
Issue10
Pages1495-1510
Publication date2023-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0146-1672 • E-ISSN: 1552-7433
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01461672221102015
PMID35819181
OpenAlexW4285077299
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited67

Understanding when people are likely to feel ambivalent is important, as ambivalence is associated with key attitude outcomes, such as attitude-behavior consistency. Interestingly, the presence of conflicting positive and negative reactions (objective ambivalence) is weakly related to feeling conflicted (subjective ambivalence). We tested a novel situation that can influence the correspondence between objective and subjective ambivalence: whether a message and a recipient’s topic match in affective versus cognitive orientation. When a person encounters a message with an affective or cognitive match to the topic, conflicting reactions may be more accessible, increasing feelings of ambivalence. Across five studies, greater objective–subjective ambivalence correspondence occurred with an affective–cognitive match between message and topic orientation. Studies 4 and 5 also demonstrated that this primarily occurred when the message was counterattitudinal. This work contributes to the literature explaining the gap between measures of objective and subjective ambivalence as well as how messages can influence attitude strength properties

Affect (linguistics) · Ambivalence · Cognition · Consistency (knowledge bases) · Feeling · Perspective (graphical) · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Communication · Cultural Differences and Values · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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