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. KEYWORDS: MINDFULNESS, ATTITUDES, AMBIVALENCE Mindfulness and ambivalence 3On the attitudinal consequences of being mindful: Links between mindfulness and attitude ambivalenceWe routinely experience mixed reactions to objects in our environment. At a recent coffee shop visit, the lead author was presented with a free sample of cake. He was tornwhile he likes cake, he knows that such an indulgence is unhealthy. He quietly deliberated before giving the cake to his friend. Of course, people frequently experience ambivalent reactions over more substantial objects, including their racial attitudes, their opinions about important social issues, and their own self-esteem (e.g., Haddock & Gebauer, 2011; van Harreveld, van der Plight, & de Liver, 2009b). Furthermore, the experience of ambivalence is usually associated with negative affect (DeMarree, Wheeler, Briñol, & Petty, 2014;Petty, Briñol, & Johnson, 2012;Rydell, McConnell, & Mackie, 2008). In this paper, we consider links between ambivalence and the construct of mindfulness. Specifically, we address whether individual differences in mindfulness are associated with individuals' comfort about holding ambivalent views, how frequently they report ambivalence, and whether mindfulness buffers the link between the experience of ambivalence and negative affect. Integrating Ambivalence and MindfulnessAmbivalence refers to the extent to which an individual has mixed views about an object. The experience of ambivalence is typically associated with negative affect that individuals are motivated to reduce (Petty et al., 2012;Rydell et al., 2008), similar to how dissonance is postulated to invoke arousal (Festinger, 1957). In one interesting study regarding the ambivalence-negative affect link, van Harreveld, Rutjens, Rotteveel, Nordgren, and vanderPligt (2009a) had participants read a message that contained either Mindfulness and ambivalence 4 univalent or ambivalent information. For ambivalence-induced participants, higher skin conductance was found when participants subsequently made a choice about the topic.Mindfulness i...
Three studies offer novel evidence addressing the consequences of explicit–implicit sexual orientation (SO) ambivalence. In Study 1, self-identified straight females completed explicit and implicit measures of SO. The results revealed that participants with greater SO ambivalence took longer responding to explicit questions about their sexual preferences, an effect moderated by the direction of ambivalence. Study 2 replicated this effect using a different paradigm. Study 3 included self-identified straight and gay female and male participants; participants completed explicit and implicit measures of SO, plus measures of self-esteem and affect regarding their SO. Among straight participants, the response time results replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2. Among gay participants, trends suggested that SO ambivalence influenced time spent deliberating on explicit questions relevant to sexuality, but in a different way. Furthermore, the amount and direction of SO ambivalence was related to self-esteem.
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