Ambivalence and Response Amplification Toward Native Peoples¹

Abstract

This study determined whether ambivalence toward Native peoples would result in amplified, or polarized, responses to members of the group, as assessed in terms of both general attitudes and social policy endorsements. In addition, it examined whether priming would mediate these effects, based on the notion that ambivalent attitudes contain both positive and negative dimensions that may be activated at different times. Induction of different mood states was used as an indirect priming manipulation. One hundred thirty‐eight Canadian participants completed measures of ambivalence toward Native peoples and Canadians. One week later, these participants underwent a positive, neutral, or negative mood induction procedure. They then indicated their attitudes toward Native peoples and Canadians, and responded to social policy questions involving both groups. Participants who were highly ambivalent or not ambivalent toward Native peoples were retained for analysis; participants generally displayed low ambivalence toward Canadians. It was predicted and the results confirmed that only participants who were ambivalent toward Native peoples would display a relative response amplification effect: a greater difference between positive and negative mood states in their responses to Native peoples than in their responses to Canadians.

Divergence vs. ambivalence: effects of personal relevance on minority influence

“…This finding supports Nemeth's idea that since the two processes are different, the dependent measures of interest have to be different too (Nemeth, 2003). However, the fact that ambivalence did not result as being a significant mediator of indirect influence confirms that ambivalence, leading to attitude instability (Bell & Esses, 1997), favours indirect influence only when other contextual factors (e.g. balanced setting and source reliability, Mucchi-Faina, 2000) concur to produce this result.…”

“…Nevertheless we speculated that ambivalence cannot be automatically considered as a mediator of attitude change for at least two reasons. Firstly, research has found that ambivalence leads to attitude instability (Bell & Esses, 1997). Then the final result (pro or con the minority) is uncertain and should be mostly related to situational factors that usually increase or decrease minority impact (such as the source's behaviour style, Moscovici, 1976;Mugny, 1982, ingroup membership, Crano & Alvaro, 1998a and persuasion (e.g.…”

Self‐ambivalence and reactions to success versus failure

“…4 The effect of structural self-ambivalence regarding cognitive self-evaluations extends previous research on the ambivalence amplification hypothesis. This research showed that people with strongly (vs. weakly) ambivalent attitudes toward social groups (e.g., Bell & Esses, 1997;Gibbons et al, 1980;Hass et al, 1991;MacDonald & Zanna, 1998;Maio et al, 1996) or toward consumer goods (Jonas et al, 1997) change their evaluations of these targets more strongly after receiving positive or negative information about them. Our study is the first to provide evidence of similar effects in the domain of self-evaluation.…”

“…For example, people with ambivalent attitudes toward Blacks should be more willing to help a friendly Black person than an unfriendly Black person or should find the friendly Black more likeable than the unfriendly Black; these differences in responses should be weaker or absent for persons with nonambivalent attitudes toward Blacks. Support for the ambivalence amplification hypothesis has been obtained for several attitude objects (mostly, stigmatized groups such as Blacks, handicapped people, feminists, Native people) and across a wide range of response types (e.g., evaluative judgments concerning the attitude object; helping; intention to hire a member of a certain group in a fictitious job application scenario; administration of electric shocks; e.g., Bell & Esses, 1997, 2002Gibbons, Stephan, Stephenson, & Petty, 1980;Hass, Katz, Rizzo, Bailey, & Eisenstadt, 1991;Jonas, Diehl, & Broemer, 1997;MacDonald & Zanna, 1998;Maio, Bell, & Esses, 1996).…”

“…The activated component then determines the response. Because nonambivalent people have only either a positive or a negative attitude component that can be activated whereas ambivalent people have both a positive and negative component, the latter people should show stronger variations in their responses across situations than the former-that is, show response amplification (for this reasoning, see Bell & Esses, 1997;MacDonald & Zanna, 1998). According to this model, only structural ambivalence (i.e., the existence and respective strength of a positive and a negative attitude component) is necessary for response amplification.…”