Dampening affect via expectations: The case of ambivalence.

People often form attitudes based on a mixture of positive and negative information. This can result in mixed evaluative reactions that are associated with feeling conflicted and undecided (i.e.

Understanding When Similarity-Induced Affective Attraction Predicts Willingness to Affiliate: An Attitude Strength Perspective.

Individuals reliably feel more attracted to those with whom they share similar attitudes. However, this affective liking does not always predict affiliative behavior, such as pursuing a friendship. The present research examined factors that influence the extent to which similarity-based affective attraction increases willingness to affiliate (i.

Commitment strength versus commitment bolstering: Uncertainty undermines and promotes relationship success.

Little research has examined factors that might weaken or strengthen commitment effects on relationship outcomes. The current research integrates attitude strength and investment model perspectives to identify uncertainty as a new moderator of commitment's predictive ability. Consistent with an attitude strength perspective, having doubt associated with commitment undermines commitment's predictive power.

Perceived Knowledge Moderates the Relation Between Subjective Ambivalence and the "Impact" of Attitudes: An Attitude Strength Perspective.

Previous work has reliably demonstrated that when people experience more subjective ambivalence about an attitude object, their attitudes have less impact on strength-related outcomes such as attitude-related thinking, judging, or behaving. However, previous research has not considered whether the amount of perceived knowledge a person has about the topic might moderate these effects. Across eight studies on different topics using a variety of outcome measures, the current research demonstrates that perceived knowledge can moderate the relation between ambivalence and the impact of attitudes on related thinking, judging, and behaving.

Metacognitive Reflection as a Moderator of Attitude Strength Versus Attitude Bolstering: Implications for Attitude Similarity and Attraction.

"Strong" attitudes often have greater impact than "weak" attitudes. However, emerging research suggests that weak (uncertain) attitudes can substantially influence thinking or behavior. We propose metacognitive reflection as a moderator between traditional strength patterns and these emerging attitude bolstering patterns.

Evaluating the message or the messenger? Implications for self-validation in persuasion.

Characteristics of persuasive message sources have been extensively studied. However, little attention has been paid to situations when people are motivated to form an evaluation of the communicator rather than the communicated issue. We postulated that these different foci can affect how a source validates message-related cognitions.

Feeling conflicted and seeking information: when ambivalence enhances and diminishes selective exposure to attitude-consistent information.

To date, little research has examined the impact of attitudinal ambivalence on attitude-congruent selective exposure. Past research would suggest that strong/univalent rather than weak/ambivalent attitudes should be more predictive of proattitudinal information seeking. Although ambivalent attitude structure might weaken the attitude's effect on seeking proattitudinal information, we believe that conflicted attitudes might also motivate attitude-congruent selective exposure because proattitudinal information should be effective in reducing ambivalence.