Ambivalence toward alcohol often develops when hazardous drinkers try to quit or to control their drinking. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between hazardous drinkers with and without ambivalence toward alcohol in terms of their visual attention to alcohol-related pictures over time using an eye-tracker. The study included 20 hazardous drinkers with ambivalence and ...

BACKGROUND Despite an increasing clinical interest in the use of personal values as a motivational tool in psychological therapies for Anorexia Nervosa (AN), research is limited. This study explored personal values among individuals with AN, with a particular focus on the 'fit' between participants' values and their AN. METHODS A qualitative research design was employed in this study. In-dept...

Although positive and negative attitudes toward a transgressor are related to increased and decreased forgiveness, respectively, prior research has failed to investigate forgiveness among those who feel both positively and negatively toward a transgressor. Therefore, the authors examined such ambivalence and its relationship to forgiveness. It was hypothesized that spouses with ambivalent attit...

Political scientists and psychologists recognize the presence of ambivalence in our attitudes, but conceptions of ambivalence are widely varied. Is ambivalence common or rare? Is it a subjective feeling that can only be measured by asking the individual, or is it an objective property of an attitude that can be measured without the respondent’s knowledge? Answers to this question may depend on ...

• People can desire attitudes that differ in valence from their current attitude. • Actual–desired discrepancies lead people to feel ambivalent. • Discrepancies also reduce prediction of behavior and increase information interest. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o The experience of attitudinal ambivalence (subjective ambivalence) is important because it predicts key consequences of attitude...

Recent research has demonstrated the malleability of self-views to subtle situational influence but has not uncovered features of the self-concept representation that make it susceptible to such change. Using research on attitude ambivalence as a foundation, we predicted that the self would be most likely to respond to a subtle change induction when the targeted self-beliefs were objectively am...

Ambivalence is a presumably unpleasant experience, and coming to terms with it is an intricate part of human existence. It is argued that ambivalent attitude holders cope with their ambivalence through compensatory perceptions of order. We first show that ambivalence leads to an increase in (visual) perceptions of order (Study 1). In Study 2 we conceptually replicate this finding by showing tha...

In this study, the authors used the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; P. Ekman & W. V. Friesen, 1978) to examine the immediate facial responses of abstinent smokers exposed to smoking cues. The aim was to investigate whether facial expressions thought to be linked to ambivalence would relate to more traditional measures of ambivalence about smoking. The authors adapted N. A. Heather's (1998) d...

Recent research has demonstrated the malleability of self-views to subtle situational influence but has not uncovered features of the self-concept representation that make it susceptible to such change. Using research on attitude ambivalence as a foundation, the current article predicted that the self would be most likely to respond to a subtle change induction when the targeted self-beliefs we...

Theory suggests that aging parents and their adult children experience ambivalence (conflicting emotions) as a result of unclear norms governing the tie between them. This study investigated personality differences and relationship context differences in ambivalence, as well as the reactions of parents and offspring to each other. As part of the Adult Family Study, 474 individuals from 158 fami...