Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea?

Abstract

Chapter 1 issue. Importantly, this group may represent an often invisible but certainly not indifferent group in society, being both aware of and, to some extent, invested in the topic at hand. They have not taken sides (yet), but they could and thus have the potential to make or break the debate. This makes ambivalents, as we will refer to these individuals from now on, an important target to understand for researchers, but also for those who want to persuade others to take their side.In this dissertation, we 1 focus on the position, opinion, and motivations of ambivalents in the context of contentious societal debates-those who can be described as on the fence. The empirical studies reported in this dissertation specifically focus on Dutch and US samples of ambivalents on issues that are the subject of societal debate, such as blackface (C Ch ha ap pt te er r 2 2 a an nd d 3 3), fireworks and meat consumption (C Ch ha ap pt te er r 3 3), and abortion (C Ch ha ap pt te er r 4 4). Our studies paint a novel portrait of the ambivalent as feeling caught in the social crossfire of the societal debate, or, to put it in perhaps more poetic terms, between the devil and deep blue sea. Indeed, we currently know little about this group, despite their potential importance for helping or hindering social change. This dissertation aims to shed new light on the social-psychological sources and experience of felt ambivalence in societal debates by seeking to answer three key research questions: Why do ambivalents feel ambivalent in the context of societal debate? How do they experience their ambivalence in such contexts? And, how do ambivalents cope with their felt ambivalence in such contexts?To achieve this aim, we explore ambivalents' experience of ambivalence using qualitative (interview) and quantitative (survey) methods across different societal debates (e.g., Zwarte Piet in the Netherlands and abortion in the USA). In C Ch ha ap pt te er rs s 2 2, , 3 3 a an nd d 4 4 we examine the link between the perception of societal conflict, the conflict out there, and the inner experience of ambivalence, which we refer to as the conflict within, by exploring the social forces (e.g., opinions of those around) behind felt ambivalence. C Ch ha ap pt te er r 2 2 provides a qualitative study of the experience of ambivalence about an annual Dutch societal debate about a tradition involving blackface (Zwarte Piet). In our analysis, we suggest that ambivalence is experienced as feeling caught in the social crossfire, which is complemented in C Ch ha ap pt te er r 3 3 with quantitative data across this and two other societal debates (i.e., meat consumption, New Year's Eve fireworks in the Netherlands).1 All three empirical chapters are published as separate articles in journals in our field and co-authored by me and my supervisors Martijn van Zomeren en Katherine Stroebe. For this reason, I will use "we" when discussing the findings and research in this dissertation. Hogg & Smith, 2007). This is why we build on four key insights from the s...