We explore user ambivalence towards interpersonal informatics systems for smoking cessation. Smokers desire support through such systems to help them reflect on their habits and create strategies for changing them, yet at the same time they are reluctant to share personal information via these systems. We conducted interviews with smokers and recent exsmokers to discuss their current practices ...

One study examined modes of social identification (‘attachment’ to the group and in-group ‘glorification’) that can lead people to experience positive psychological consequences from their cognition-based ambivalent evaluations of the in-group. As expected, among highly attached participants, cognitive in-group ambivalence predicted a stronger perception of their ambivalent views about fellow g...

BACKGROUND A scale aimed at measuring ambivalence among people with pachinko/pachi-slot playing disorder, the Pachinko/Pachi-Slot Playing Ambivalence Scale (PPAS), was developed and its reliability and validity ascertained. METHODS A total of 522 participants (average year: 48.0) who were residing in Tokyo Metropolitan Area, and had played pachinko within the previous year completed questions...

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 decreas...

In this commentary, we respond to Derek Ruez and Daniel Cockayne’s article ‘Feeling Otherwise: Ambivalent Affects the Politics of Critique in Geography’. We do so by picking up ambivalence—or more precisely, ambivalence about ambivalence—as a tool with which Cockayne leave us. find somewhat difficult grasp, but understand as part its design. Ambivalence undoes subject’s mastery. doing so, that ...

We explored people’s reactions to expert categorizers who expressed difficulty in making a categorization decision. Specifically, we compared people’s impressions of expert health professionals who either expressed certainty, uncertainty, or ambivalence about a categorization decision in the form of a diagnosis. We found that ambivalence resulted in the most negative impressions of these expert...

OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to analyze the relationship and differential validity of three constructs related to reduced emotional expression. METHODS One hundred six patients of a psychosomatic clinic completed questionnaires assessing alexithymia (TAS-20, BVAQ), ambivalence over emotional expression (AEQ-G18), and social insecurity (UQ). RESULTS A second-order principal com...

The predictive validity of the Intense Ambivalence Scale was examined in a 10-year longitudinal study of 362 psychometrically identified psychosis-prone and control participants. Elevated scores on the Intense Ambivalence Scale predicted psychotic-like and depressive symptoms, and the development of psychotic illnesses at the 10-year follow-up assessment (after the removal of variance for membe...