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When I lived in Ohio, about this time every year my social media feed would be taken siege by political ads. "This politician’s great!" "That one’s terrible!" "Blah, blah, give us money!"
Although you might already know your Presidential preference in the upcoming US election, these advertisements might elicit some ambivalence in you (i.e. feeling mixed or torn about your preference). For today’s post, we’re going to discuss ambivalence, however, we'll focus on another source of it:
Your friends and family.
Attitudinal Ambivalence
As we’ve discussed on this blog, a person’s overall positive or negative opinion on a topic is called their attitude. However, just because someone’s attitude is overall positive or negative, it doesn’t mean that it’s only positive or negative.
For example, you might have an overall positive attitude toward coffee; however, you also know it’s not good for your teeth, not good for going to sleep, and it can initiate a sudden (and hopefully unobstructed) rush for the bathroom. Thus, although your general attitude toward coffee may be positive, you might still have some ambivalence toward it.
Ambivalence refers to the conflicting positive and negative reactions people have to the same topic. For a political example, you may have a generally positive attitude toward a political candidate; however, you may also recognize many of his/her flaws, leading you to feeling ambivalent (i.e., mixed, conflicted, torn) about the candidate.
And importantly, this ambivalence can undermine our behavior. That is, even if you are only positive or negative toward a candidate (e.g., you are uniformly negative toward Trump or uniformly negative toward Biden), these feelings of ambivalence could prevent you from actually voting.
But how could you feel ambivalence in your preference if you are only positive or negative toward one of the candidates?
Familial Ambivalence
Because we are inherently social creatures, naturally, others’ judgments about us are influential. But, did you know that such social judgment—real or imagined—can influence your most personal attitudes?
In one study, researchers asked participants to report their attitudes toward a variety of topics, such as watching television, drinking alcohol, practicing safe sex, etc. Later, participants rated how mixed or conflicted (i.e., ambivalent) they felt toward each of the topics.
Interestingly, even for the topics where participants were generally all positive or all negative toward the topic, participants still reported feeling some ambivalence about it. How?
Well, these were the topics for which their parents had differing attitudes…
That is, at the end of the survey I just described, participants reported their parents’ attitudes toward each of those topics. And the researchers found that the more the participant’s parents differed from the participant’s own attitude, the more mixed and conflicted the participants themselves felt about the topic—even though the participant clearly rated their own attitude on the topic as positive or negative!
The researchers ran a similar study looking at the effect of friends’ attitudes on people’s ambivalence. That is, college students were asked for their attitudes toward reduced tuition prices—which nearly all students reported very positive attitudes toward.
Later in the study, however, the researchers informed the participants that their peers were actually negative toward reduced tuition. And although the participants personally expressed uniform positivity toward the topic, learning about their friends’ attitudes suddenly made them ambivalent.
In other words, although we like to believe that our attitudes are primarily influenced by our own beliefs and reactions, this research highlights how socially-dependent even our most personal attitudes can be.
Ambivalence in the Political Sphere
When thinking about political elections—especially in the upcoming Presidential one in the U.S.—you may only have a positive or negative attitude toward one of the candidates.
And yet, you still may feel ambivalent about your preference.
After today’s post, then, it’s important to ask whether that ambivalence actually stems from a mix of positive and negative reactions you have about the candidate. Or whether your ambivalence stems from the real (or even imagined!) conflicting attitudes of your parents or friends.
Although it’s important to keep in mind the views of others, ultimately, it is important to come to an attitude based on your own personal evaluations of the information. It can be easy to let others’ attitudes influence our own, but their attitudes might be based on far fewer facts or less compelling reasons than that which your own attitude is founded.
Want to learn more on how psychological research can be used for understanding and enhancing everyday life? Find out more at EverydayPsych.com.
References
Priester, J. R., & Petty, R. E. (2001). Extending the bases of subjective attitudinal ambivalence: Interpersonal and intrapersonal antecedents of evaluative tension. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(1), 19.
