Ambivalence, conflict, and decision making: attitudes and feelings in Germany towards NATO's military intervention in the Kosovo war

Abstract

Two hundred and thirty-four persons were surveyed to assess personality aspects (action versus state orientation, need for cognition, faith in intuition) and emotional aspects of their attitudes towards the NATO military intervention in the Kosovo war in the spring of 1999. Additionally, in an imagined scenario they were asked to decide whether they would sign a petition addressed to the German government protesting against military intervention. Three ways of dealing with this decision were differentiated: (1) decisive action, (2) avoiding the decision con¯ict, and (3) elaborating the decision problem with the goal of building up feelings to guide action (ampli®cation). Correlations between the variables were evaluated using path analysis in order to predict the decision strategy from personality dimensions and attitude variables (ambivalence, involvement). High action orientation caused low attitude ambivalence and high personal involvement in the topic. Strong ambivalence prevented swift action and supported a tendency towards elaboration and ampli®cation of feelings. Involvement had a favorable effect on action readiness and a negative effect on con¯ict-avoiding strategies. Moreover, it moderated the effects of ambivalence on the preference for con¯ict management strategies. The results con®rm theoretical approaches that stress the importance of affect for acting and deciding.

Attitudes Toward a Military Enforcement of Human Rights

“…As Hänze (2001) and Fetchenhauer and Bierhoff (2001) have pointed out, the topic of military interventions for the sake of human rights implies a moral dilemma because two basic values are in contradiction with each other, namely protecting human rights vs. not using violence to solve social conflicts. Therefore, the willingness to act in a morally appropriate way (indicated by high levels of social responsibility and concern for human rights) leads neither to an unequivocally positive nor negative assessment of military interventions.…”

Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change.

“…Because strong attitudes are often accompanied by extensive supporting knowledge (e.g., Abelson, 1988), it likely would not be hard to retrieve relevant propositions. In contrast to the case for strong attitudes, ambivalent attitudes are likely to produce much more pliable and unstable evaluative judgments (e.g., Armitage & Conner, 2000), in part because they may elicit greater cognitive elaboration (Hänze, 2001). Without any particular bias to constrain the direction of elaboration, ambivalent evaluative judgments not only may be more unstable but may also be less consistently correlated with automatic evaluative reactions (e.g., Nosek, 2005; see also Hofmann, Gschwendner, Nosek, & Schmitt, 2005).…”

Identifying Gender Differences in Destination Decision Making

“…Furthermore, the hesitation scale comprises difficulties associated with the initiation of an intended activity, and hypothesizes that people have reduced likelihood of forming clear and polarized views of controversial issues, display ambivalence and thus are less inclined to initiate decision-making related behavior; Thompson and Zanna (1995) have reported some evidence that personal fear of invalidity is conceptually related to hesitation, because such fears are concerned with errors and the negative consequences of poor decisions, which manifest themselves in hesitation to decide (Hänze, 2001). Given the intangibility and perishability of overseas travel, tourists frequently experience the unexpected while traveling overseas.…”

“…As the main cause of tourist hesitation is fear of decision errors and negative consequences (Hänze, 2001), possibly no gender differences exist in tourist hesitation. As a result, this current study attempts to clarify whether the degree of hesitation differs between male and female tourists.…”