Attitudinal Ambivalence and Message-Based Persuasion: Motivated Processing of Proattitudinal Information and Avoidance of Counterattitudinal Information

TLDR

Attitudinal ambivalence is known to heighten the processing of attitude‑relevant information. The study investigates whether ambivalence can lead people to avoid thinking about persuasive messages. The authors propose that ambivalent individuals preferentially process proattitudinal content that can reduce ambivalence while avoiding counterattitudinal content that could increase it. Across three studies, ambivalent participants engaged more with proattitudinal messages, whereas less ambivalent participants engaged more with counterattitudinal messages, and ambivalent participants’ belief that proattitudinal content reduces ambivalence mediated the observed processing differences.

Abstract

Attitudinal ambivalence has been found to increase processing of attitude-relevant information. In this research, the authors suggest that ambivalence can also create the opposite effect: avoidance of thinking about persuasive messages. If processing is intended to reduce experienced ambivalence, then ambivalent people should increase processing of information perceived as proattitudinal (agreeable) and able to decrease ambivalence. However, ambivalence should also lead people to avoid processing of counterattitudinal (disagreeable) information that threatens to increase ambivalence. Three studies provide evidence consistent with this proposal. When participants were relatively ambivalent, they processed messages to a greater extent when the messages were proattitudinal rather than counterattitudinal. However, when participants were relatively unambivalent, they processed messages more when the messages were counterattitudinal rather than proattitudinal. In addition, ambivalent participants perceived proattitudinal messages as more likely than counterattitudinal messages to reduce ambivalence, and these perceptions accounted for message position effects on amount of processing.