Abstract
The effect of evaluative ambivalence on attitude change. This research deals with the consequences of the ambivalence between one's explicit and implicit attitude. Since internal inconsistency is associated with aversive feelings and negative outcomes, individuals with explicit and implicit ambivalence might be motivated to resolve the evaluative conflict by seeking additional information related to the attitude object. In order to test this prediction, we conducted a study in which explicit and implicit ambivalence and the extent of information processing toward the object of ambivalence were assessed. We predicted and found that individuals with implicit-explicit ambivalence showed greater processing of persuasive communications related to the object of ambivalence as indexed by their attitudinal responses to strong versus weak message arguments.
