The Agony of Ambivalence and Ways to Resolve It: Introducing the MAID Model

Harreveld, Frenk van; Pligt, J. van der; Liver, Yael N de

doi:10.1177/1088868308324518

Cited by 254 publications

(375 citation statements)

References 121 publications

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“…To the extent that mindfulness is associated with greater ambivalence comfort, we hypothesized that mindfulness would buffer the link between the experience of ambivalence and subsequent negative affect. This line of reasoning bares consistency with the MAID Model of ambivalence (van Harreveld et al, 2009b), which suggests that ambivalence is particularly uncomfortable when people need to resolve the ambivalence.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 89%

On the Attitudinal Consequences of Being Mindful

Haddock

Foad

Windsor-Shellard

et al. 2017

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

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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...

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Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 89%

On the Attitudinal Consequences of Being Mindful

Haddock

Foad

Windsor-Shellard

et al. 2017

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

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“…Research also found that ambivalent individuals pay closer attention to agreeable messages and avoid processing disagreeable information (Clark et al 2008). Ambivalence resolution is thus a fruitful avenue for future research (van Harreveld et al 2009). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ambivalence toward a country and consumers’ willingness to buy emblematic brands: The differential predictive validity of objective and subjective ambivalence measures on behavior

Russell

Klein³

2010

Mark Lett

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Previous country-of-origin research has treated opinions of countries as either positive or negative, even though people may in fact hold conflicting opinions about countries. The extant literature on ambivalence suggests that the coexistence of positive and negative opinions of a country should increase avoidance of objects associated with that country, above and beyond the effects of mere positivity or negativity. Data collected from French consumers who varied in degrees of ambivalence toward the US reveal that ambivalence, measured indirectly through consumers' coexisting positive and negative views, is indeed negatively related to consumers' willingness to buy emblematic American brands. The findings highlight the latent nature of ambivalence, the difficulty of assessing the subjective experience of the ambivalence state, and the importance and practicality of using indirect measures.Keywords Country-of-origin . Ambivalence . Brand image . Indirect measure . Latent construct This research examines how ambivalence toward a country relates to consumers' willingness to buy (WTB) brands emblematic of that country. Previous country-oforigin (CoO) research has treated country attitudes as a univalent construct, ranging from negative to positive. The extant literature finds that positive/negative country Mark Lett (2011) 22:357-371

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“…The term ambivalence broadly refers to these mixed evaluative reactions whether they stem from explicit or implicit discrepancies ). People can be ambivalent about a wide variety of topics (e.g., abortion, career choices) and domains (e.g., health, race, self), and the study of ambivalence has therefore interested scholars in psychology (Conner & Armitage, 2008;van Harreveld, van der Pligt, & de Liver, 2009), political science (Lavine, 2001;Rudolph & Popp, 2007), sociology (Hajda, 1968), and other related disciplines (e.g., Otnes, Lowrey, & Shrum, 1997) for decades.…”

Section: Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wanting other attitudes: Actual–desired attitude discrepancies predict feelings of ambivalence and ambivalence consequences

DeMarree

Wheeler

Briñol

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: El acceso a la versión del editor puede requerir la suscripción del recurso Access to the published version may require subscription ACTUAL-DESIRED ATTITUDE DISCREPANCIES 2 AbstractFeelings of attitudinal ambivalence (subjective ambivalence) are important because they predict 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 a previously 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.

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The Agony of Ambivalence and Ways to Resolve It: Introducing the MAID Model

Cited by 254 publications

References 121 publications

On the Attitudinal Consequences of Being Mindful

On the Attitudinal Consequences of Being Mindful

Ambivalence toward a country and consumers’ willingness to buy emblematic brands: The differential predictive validity of objective and subjective ambivalence measures on behavior

Wanting other attitudes: Actual–desired attitude discrepancies predict feelings of ambivalence and ambivalence consequences

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