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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Although research suggests political ambivalence prevails in the American public, little
attention has been paid to the mechanisms through which a persons attitude structure
and relevant antecedents interact to create ambivalence. This article aims to summarize
and synthesize the results of existing studies on ambivalence in order to construct a coher-
ent theoretical framework to explain various ambivalence phenomena identified across the
social sciences. First, relevant studies and conceptualizations of ambivalence are reviewed.
Next, drawing from the metacognitive model and belief accessibility, potential relations and
mechanisms are presented wherein multiple beliefs and metacognitions are related to the
attitude object to create ambivalence. Last, the theoretical contributions and implications
of the proposed model are discussed.
doi:10.1111/comt.12050
An oncologist informs a woman that the suspicious area found in her routine mam-
mogram is cancer. After further diagnostics, the doctor recommends a mastectomy
as the best treatment option. While greatly troubled by the diagnosis of breast can-
cer, the woman may likely have a positive attitude toward the mastectomy because of
its role in treating the cancer. Likewise, her partner has reassured her not to worry
about the esthetic effects of the surgery. She is loved and will continue to be loved
regardless. Yet, at times the woman may feel ambivalent about the surgery because,
while the surgery will help with the cancer, despite her knowledge of her partners
love, she has moments when the negative attitude regarding the esthetic effects of the
surgery surface to consciousness. At another level, she also feels some ambivalence
about the use of a mastectomy as a treatment. Her beliefs about a mastectomy may
include both positive beliefs about the efficacy of the mastectomy as well as negative
beliefs involving botched surgeries or unnecessary surgeries (Gill & Babrow, 2007).
This example highlights the complexity of attitude ambivalence because the ambiva-
lence can arise from conflicting attitudes (effective treatment vs. esthetic effect of the
surgery) or from conflicting beliefs (efficacy beliefs vs. beliefs about unnecessary surg-
eries). In this article, we will present a single unified model that attempts to integrate
these different sources of ambivalence.
A growing body of literature shows that a considerable proportion of the American
public are ambivalent in regard to many health care decisions (Dormandy, Hank-
ins, & Marteaum, 2006; Gill & Babrow, 2007), as well as several important social
issues, including abortion (Alvarez & Brehm, 1995; Craig, Kane, & Martinez, 2002),
gay rights (Craig, Martinez, & Kane, 2005), and the welfare state (Feldman, 1988;
Feldman & Zaller, 1992; Gainous, Craig, & Martinez, 2008; Gainous & Martinez,
2005). Moreover, ambivalence is strongly connected to various attitude-related con-
structs such as the stability, predictability, and strength of a persons attitude (Armitage
& Conner, 2000; Clark, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 2008; Maio, Bell, & Esses, 1996; McGraw,
Hasecke, & Conger, 2003; Thompson, Zanna, & Griffin, 1995). An individual who has
an ambivalent attitude is more likely to be swayed than those who hold univalent atti-
tudes (Craig et al., 2005; Martinez, Gainous, & Craig, 2012). Also, studies repeatedly
suggest that ambivalent attitudes are positively related to systematic information pro-
cessing in order to increase ones judgmental confidence in their attitude (Alvarez &
Brehm, 1995, 2002; Meffert, Guge, & Lodge, 2004; Rudolph & Popp, 2007; Zhao & Cai,
2008). As a consequence, scholars have argued that ambivalence is the key to a more
complete understanding regarding the nature of the publics attitudes and opinions
(Priester & Petty, 2001; Thompson et al., 1995; Zaller, 1992).
Despite continued efforts to synthesize various approaches to ambivalence (for
overview, see Baek, 2010), a coherent theoretical understanding, explaining various
ambivalence phenomena, has yet to be established. Currently absent in existing mod-
els and theoretical explanations of ambivalence is an account of the causal processes
via which the structure of individuals attitudes and competing beliefs relevant to the
attitude interact to yield an ambivalent attitude toward given attitude objects. Psycho-
logical approaches to ambivalence implicitly treat ambivalence as an a priori given,
paying little attention to its possible antecedents with a few notable exceptions (e.g.,
Priester & Petty, 2001; Visser & Mirabile, 2004). Studies of ambivalence in political sci-
ence, health communication, and sociology, on the other hand, often fail to specify the
mechanism via which potential evaluative tensions from competing social relations
and value conflicts are translated into ambivalence.
The primary aim of this review is to summarize and synthesize the existing stud-
ies on ambivalence, and to present our metacognitive model (MCM) of ambivalence.
By doing so, we attempt to provide a coherent explanation of various ambivalence
phenomena across the social sciences. Before describing our conceptual model, how-
ever, basic definitions of ambivalence are reviewed. Next, a new framework, along
with a summary of the relevant literature and conceptualizations, is proposed as a
basis for identifying and understanding the possible mechanisms via which attitudinal
ambivalence is created within various communication contexts. Last, the theoretical
contributions and implications of the model are discussed.
Explicating ambivalence
According to Kaplan (1972, p. 362), ambivalence simultaneously indicate[s] both
a favorable and an unfavorable attitude toward a given stimulus object. The con-
temporary theories of ambivalence postulate that a persons opinions or attitudes
could be composed of internally conflicting elements such as positive and negative
considerations1 that occupy separate dimensions in a bivariate space (Cacioppo &
Berntson, 1994; Lang, Shin, & Lee, 2005). Cacioppo and Berntsons (1994) bivariate
evaluative space model (BES) further postulates that these conflicting evaluations
can be simultaneously activated, and more importantly evaluated separately under
certain conditions (also see Kaplan, 1972; Thompson et al., 1995). The notion
of ambivalence, therefore, suggests that ones attitudes fall within the following
three categories depending on the relative intensity of the positive and negative
evaluationsindifferent (low in both positive and negative terms), univalent (high
in positive terms and low in negative terms, and vice versa), and ambivalent (high in
both positive and negative terms).2
Public opinion scholars, mainly within the context of survey nonresponse and
instability issues, have also advanced the theoretical understanding of ambivalence
(e.g., Feldman & Zaller, 1992; Zaller & Feldman, 1992). Zaller and Feldman (1992,
p. 579) argued that citizens carry around in their heads a mix of only partially con-
sistent ideas and considerations. They further asserted that as the items in most
public opinion surveys are framed as summary judgments, requiring respondents
to aggregate multiple and potentially conflicting considerations into a single answer,
respondents are less likely to offer a consistent judgment when answering a series of
survey items over time. A similar process occurs when people make medical decisions
involving screening options for a medical condition when they have ambivalent atti-
tudes toward the screening. A screening decision is made at a particular moment in
time so that their attitude toward the screening appears to be univalent, but compli-
ance with the screening procedure may vacillate due to the ambivalence of the attitude
toward the procedure (Dormandy et al., 2006).
mixed (Bassili, 1996; Holbrook & Krosnick, 2005; Priester & Petty, 1996; Thomp-
son et al., 1995). In contrast, objective ambivalence has been conceptualized as an
underlying attitudinal structure of subjective ambivalence (DeMarree, Petty, & Briol,
2007). Objective ambivalence is based on the following premises: (a) that positive and
negative evaluations can exist in an attitude structure separately but simultaneously
(Kaplan, 1972; Priester & Petty, 1996) and (b) that ambivalence increases as the func-
tion of intensity (i.e., the sum of an individuals positive and negative evaluations) and
the discrepancy between positive and negative evaluations (Thompson et al., 1995).
Structural measures of ambivalence are assessed by separately measuring participants
positive and negative reactions to an attitude object while ignoring any reactions of
the opposite valence, and then submitting these evaluations to certain mathematical
formulas (for a critical assessment of various formulas, see Priester and Petty (1996);
Kaplan (1972), and Thompson et al. (1995)).3
Attribute 1 Evaluation 1
Attitude
Object Attribute 2 Evaluation 2
Attribute 3 Evaluation 3
Consideration 1 Consideration 2
Individual
(-) ? (+)
Attitude
Object
why and how these potentially competing considerations are translated (or, not
translated) into ambivalence. Nor do existing theoretical models of attitudinal struc-
ture (the dominant approach in social psychology), such as the MODE model or the
MCM framework, successfully explain the possible relationship between attitudinal
structure and various antecedents of ambivalence. With its focus on the automatic
activation of a composite attitude, the MCM framework neither clearly specifies the
role of existing beliefs of the attitude object (e.g., Blankenship, Wegener, & Murray,
2012; Van Harreveld & Van Der Pligt, 2004) nor explains the impact of novel infor-
mation in attitude formation or change (Blankenship et al., 2012; Van Overwalle &
Siebler, 2005). As a consequence, it is not clear how various communication processes
and/or sociological antecedents, which presumably play a crucial role in making
existing attributes more salient or even introducing new information concerning
attitude objects, are related to an overall judgment and evaluative processes.
4A. No activation of
secondary cognitions
at the same time evaluate his or her stance on social issues negatively (e.g., attitudes
about Obamas health care reform).5
Extant research suggests that when individuals form a global attitude, they
actively incorporate evaluative judgments of multiple attributes into a single
summary evaluation that is stored in memory (e.g., Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio,
1997; Van Der Pligt, De Vries, Manstead, & Van Harreveld, 2000). This bottom-up
processing implies that individuals engage in mathematic-like computations (such
as that of the expectancy-value model: Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) in order to integrate
multiple attributes.6 However, individuals do not necessarily recompute the entire
set of relevant attribute judgments at all times because they can access a summary
attitude as well. However, when motivated or explicitly asked to reconsider their
beliefs about the attitude object, they can formulate an attitude anew using an inte-
grative process to consider the relevant attributes or beliefs about the attitude object
(Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio, 1997; Van Harreveld, Van Der Pligt, De Vries, Wenneker,
& Verhue, 2004; but for an opposing view, see Fazio, 2007).
Another crucial component of our model lies in its emphasis on ones metacogni-
tive judgment toward ones own primary cognitions. Stated more formally:
Proposition 3: Each of the primary cognitions of relevant beliefs, or attributes, is
tagged with a respective metacognition, or a secondary cognition.
Proposition 4: Metacognitions regarding the primary cognitions could modify
(suppress or magnify) the use of respective primary cognitions in formulating an
attitude.
The present model assumes that each of the evaluative judgments of the relevant
beliefs or attributes is tagged with its respective metacognition, which indicates vary-
ing degrees of cognitive assessment such as confidence or perceived validity with
respect to ones evaluative judgment (e.g., That thought came to mind easily, so it
must be correct) (Petty, Briol, Tormala, & Wegener, 2007). Scholars suggest that
metacognition acts as a confidence or validity tag related to a primary cognition (Petty,
Briol, et al., 2007; Tormala & DeSensi, 2008), therefore metacognitions are partic-
ularly important for understanding attitudes. Extant research suggests that greater
confidence or validity toward the primary cognition predicts greater use of respec-
tive evaluations when formulating a response to a global attitude object. Moreover,
any untagged primary cognition is assumed to be valid until that primary cognition
is explicitly and deliberately invalidated within ones memory structure (e.g., Petty &
Briol, 2009; Rucker, Briol, & Petty, 2011).
Having stated the basic component of our theoretical model, let us address its
underlying mechanisms associated with each component:
Proposition 5: The process of retrieving a relevant belief and its respective primary
cognition is governed by the relatively unconscious, and automatic activation of
such components.
Proposition 6: The process of retrieving a secondary cognition is, in contrast,
governed by relatively conscious, and deliberative processing.
Within the present framework, we further hypothesize that belief accessibility and
attitude accessibility is governed by relatively automatic, spontaneous activation pro-
cess. Therefore when an implicit attitude measure is employed, ones attitudes tend
to represent automatically evoked responses without activating the secondary cog-
nitions (Olson & Fazio, 2009; Petty & Briol, 2009). In contrast, the effects of the
relevant metacognitions are assumed to be retrieved by more deliberative or explicit
processes, as the MODE model and the MCM approach suggest (Fazio, 2007; Petty &
Briol, 2009).
From this formulation, we further propose several possible linkages between
ones attitude structure that we have outlined and various antecedents of ambivalence
(Figure 4), especially from various communication processes ranging from inter-
personal, mass-mediated, and computer-mediated context. In the next section, we
describe several different mechanisms and working hypothesis.
Examples of such processes can be found in many of the media priming and
framing studies. Media priming involves the short-term impact of exposure to the
media on subsequent judgments or behavior (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen,
& Carpentier, 2009, p. 74), and framing effects further emphasizes the impact of
news frames on audiences interpretation of an issue or an event (Tewksbury &
Scheufele, 2009). Extant research has demonstrated the influence of exposure to
different media messages on the accessibility of different attributes related to a
given issue (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Kim, Scheufele, & Shanahan, 2002; Price &
Tewksbury, 1997; Tourangeau, Rasinski, & DAndrade, 1991). For example, when
participants were repeatedly exposed to a different story about an issue for 5 days in
a row (e.g., defense, pollution, economic issues), they were more likely to use that
issue when evaluating how the president was performing his job (Iyengar, Peters, &
Kinder, 1982). This effect likely occurred because the repeated exposure increased the
accessibility of that information so that the information was more likely to be used
when asked to evaluate the president (Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2009). Further, studies
on framing effects often demonstrate the activation of frame-relevant cognitions in
response to the media exposure (e.g., Price, Tewksbury, & Powers, 1997) or even
a temporal change in the weights of various attributes (Chong & Druckman, 2007;
Nelson, Oxley, & Clawson, 1997). Therefore, to the extent individuals are exposed
to messages emphasizing different frames (Chong & Druckman, 2007; Hmielowski,
2012), exposure to such messages may make multiple attributes simultaneously
accessible, thus increasing the inconsistency between the activated attributes.
Consider a study by Borah (2011), which suggests that framing effects can at least
temporarily increase ambivalence by increasing the accessibility of competing con-
siderations. In the one-sided frame condition, participants were presented with one
of two competitively framed media stimuli regarding the issue of a civil liberties con-
flict; one emphasized the value of free speech (e.g., KKKs right to hold the rally) and
the other emphasized public safety issues (e.g., concerns about the safety of the stu-
dent body). Further, in the mixed frame condition, participants were presented with
stimulus that had quotes emphasizing both the public safety and free speech frame. Of
particular interest, the result of this study revealed that, for those who were exposed
to the mixed frame condition the attitudes on allowing the KKKs rally in campus
were between the attitudes toward the two issues in the one-sided frame condition (see
Table 7 in Borah, 2011 for more details). In light of our model, it could be inferred that
such a pattern of data was, at least partly, attributable to the temporal increase in the
accessibility of competing considerations. When exposed to a certain frame, values
relevant to such a frame are, at least temporally, likely to be more accessible than prior
to exposure to the message. Consequently, for those who simultaneously exposed to
competing values (via mixed frame), the increased accessibility of the competing
considerations would require individuals to consider both of the values when asked
to express their attitudes toward civil liberties conflict.
Second, the proposed model also predicts that changes in the direction of a sec-
ondary cognition (Proposition 3 and 4) are also likely to be related to attitudinal
are likely to reflect simple differences in the relationships between our key theoreti-
cal constructs. For example, one communication modality may have great influence
on metacognition than another. But we believe the basic processes will operate across
these different modalities and domains.
For example, exposure to different political viewpoints via interpersonal discussion
is more likely to increase ambivalence (e.g., Mutz, 2002) than a nearly identical type of
exposureexposure to opinionchallenging informationfrom mass media (e.g.,
Garrett et al., 2013). In light of our theoretical model, these differential patterns of
influence on ambivalence across different modalities likely reflect a differential influ-
ence on metacognitive judgments. Specifically, we would hypothesize that disagree-
able information presented by people within your immediate personal network has a
stronger influence on a persons perception of the validity or certainty of attitudinally
relevant beliefs than that same information presented by the media. Of course, our
model predicts that the differential effects on the metacognitive beliefs will translate
into different levels of attitudinal ambivalence.
Within the domain of health-related risky behavior, previous research sug-
gests that some unhealthy behaviors such as smoking are based on habitual and
spontaneous reactions that are difficult to regulate intentionally (Fazio, 1990;
Huijding, de Jong, Wiers, & Verkooijen, 2005; Rhodes & Ewoldsen, 2009; Rhodes,
Roskos-Ewoldsen, Aimee, & Bradford, 2008). Additionally, when attitudes toward
smoking are measured implicitly, studies also found that smoking is often perceived
neutrally or even negatively by smokers (Huijding et al., 2005; Swanson, Rudman,
& Greenwald, 2001). This suggests that a global attitude toward smoking may not
be a driving factor for smoking behavior. Rather, it suggests that positive and acces-
sible attitudes toward some aspects of smoking (e.g., smoking is tasty) are more
responsible for the maintenance of this habitual behavior. To the extent this is true,
the current model would predict that any communication intervention should aim
to develop a strong automatic association of a set of attributes that is of the opposite
valence (e.g., smokers breath is unpleasant) rather than cognitively bolstering the
already negative global attitude.
Briol, & Tormala, 2002). In brief, the self-validation hypothesis posits that (a)
confidence in ones cognitive response moderates the degree of attitude change,
and (b) this relationship depends on whether ones cognitive response is positive
or negative. Thus, when ones message-relevant thoughts are generally positive,
increased metacognitive confidence generates greater attitude change in favor of the
message. In contrast, if ones message-relevant thoughts are uniformly negative, the
self-validation hypothesis predicts that increasing metacognitive confidence inhibits
attitude change (Petty et al., 2002).
What is noteworthy in vertical ambivalence (i.e., mismatch between ones
implicit and explicit attitudes) is that it could stimulate people to engage in more
elaborative processing of ones own judgment in order to increase the attitude
confidence (Maio et al., 1996; Meffert et al., 2004). Applying the same logic as
the self-validation hypothesis, consider the hypothetical situation where a per-
sons attitude consists of (a) a negative evaluation of a racial minority when a
measure of automatic evaluation is employed (i.e., an implicit attitude measure),
and (b) positive evaluation of the racial minority when a deliberative measure is
used (Ewoldsen et al., 2014; Olson & Fazio, 2009; Rhodes & Ewoldsen, 2013). The
present model predicts that (a) in situations where a person is engaged in high
elaboration, vertical ambivalence would create even more thought elaboration
(or reflection) on ones own evaluations in an attempt to resolve the ambiva-
lence. Therefore, (b) the perceived validity of existing attitude (metacognitive
confidence) should be adjusted based on the extent and the nature of thought
elaboration (positive vs. negative). Furthermore, (c) this further could create hor-
izontal ambivalence (i.e., evaluative tension between differently valenced beliefs of
an attitude object) because previously held beliefs and their associative evaluations
should be adjusted accordingly to changes in the respective metacognitions. This
could translate into even more elaboration if the changes in the beliefs and their
metacognitions result in changes in the global attitude based on this horizontal
structure. In other words, the model would predict a dynamic relation between
vertical and horizontal ambivalence as the system of accessible attitudes and beliefs
and their respective metacognitions adjust to each other in an attempt to create
balance.
Notes
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