I Am Aware of My Inconsistencies but Can Tolerate Them: The Effect of High Quality Listening on Speakers' Attitude Ambivalence.

We examined how listeners characterized by empathy and a non-judgmental approach affect speakers' attitude structure. We hypothesized that high quality listening decreases speakers' social anxiety, which in turn reduces defensive processing. This reduction in defensive processing was hypothesized to result in an awareness of contradictions (increased objective-attitude ambivalence), and decreased attitude extremity.