Wanting other attitudes: Actual–desired attitude discrepancies predict feelings of ambivalence and ambivalence consequences
By Kenneth G. DeMarree, S. Wheeler, P. Briñol, Richard E. Petty. 2014
96 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract 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.
Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0f4165b34acbe6c6c79decdcb7c8f9abda649fa6
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In Applied Psychology
In Social Psychology
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- The ABC of Ambivalence: Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive Consequences of Attitudinal Conflict (2015, background): “attitude holders to have greater interest in attitude-relevant information (DeMarree et al., 2014).”