The agony of ambivalence and ways to resolve it: Introducing the MAID model - van Harreveld, van der Pligt & de Liver (2009) - Article

What is ambivalence? 

Before making a decision, you get a lot of information, which often is incongruent. Then you experience ambivalence. Previous reviews on ambivalence emphasized definitional issues of ambivalence and the relationship with dimensions of attitude strength. In this article, they focus on the affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of ambivalence.

What is attitudinal ambivalence? 

Bipolar measures of attitude have an inherent limitation. Common bipolar measures of attitude do not distinguish between people who are torn between the choices and people who don't care. This is the bipolair problem. Measuring attitudes is mostly done by bipolair measures. Such measures represent attitudes by means of a unidimensional evaluative continuum and usually present participants with two words that are reciprocally related, such as weak versus strong. Bipolar measures of attitude are ubiquitous. However, such a unidimensional continuum does not allow for distinguishing ambivalent attitudes from indifferent ones because both attitudes can be expressed only by ticking the “neutral” midpoint of the bipolar scale. Ambivalence doesn't mean that you do not have an oppinion, but that you have two or more options, you can not choose between. Kaplan (1972) was the first to distinguish between ambivalence and indifference. People who have both strong positive and negative feelings are ambivalent. People who have weak positive and negative feelings, are indifferent. The work of Cacioppo and colleagues showed that positive and negative evaluations are stochastically and functionally independent, and they argued that attitudes should be represented by a bivariate space rather than a bipolar continuum. 

Research distinguishes between potential ambivalence and felt ambivalence. Potential ambivalence is when you are still unaware and this can be related to the PAST model (i.e., “prior attitudes are still there” model). This model argued that for attitude change, there can be conflict between a newly endorsed attitude and an older rejected attitude. This model says that ambivalence can be implicit. When you are aware of the ambivalence, it is felt ambivalence. Felt ambivalence is about the  psychological discomfort resulting from conflicting beliefs or feelings. Another distinction is when affect and cognition are in conflict with each other, one speaks of intercomponent ambivalence or affective–cognitive ambivalence. 

Is ambivalence uncomfortable? 

A few studies tried to provide evidence that ambivalence can be associated with discomfort. One argument is that being made aware of one's incompatable beliefs should generate psychological discomfort. Racial ambivalence was found to be related to a more negative mood. A different conclusion was that there is a negative relation between ambivalence in a group and psychological arousal. 

When is ambivalence associated with discomfort? 

Ambivalence is only associated with discomfort when both positive and negative components are simultaneously accessible. It only is discomfortable when you become aware of the inner conflict. It also depends on contextual factors. For example, racial ambivalence is primarily salient in an intergroup context. People who identify strongly with their in-group, are motivated to maintain their social identity. Therefore they will negatively evaluate a salient outgroup, even though they're ambivalent attitude holders. When you are not strongly identified with the group, there is less discomfort. 

The discomfort of ambivalence is the greatest for people who are high in preference for consistency. An adapted Implicit Association Task was used to measure the response time in ambivalent attitudes, with which they found that when an ambivalent attitude object is preceded by a positive or negative prime, the attitudes become more accessable then with neutral primes. This is most likely  because the prime facilitates one of the two evaluative responses that are at the core of the ambivalent attitude. A neutral prime doesn't. 

Why is ambivalence unpleasant? 

People prefer attitudes to be in accordance with each other. The self-discrepancy theory explains that ambivalent attitude holders are confonted with a discrepancy between the attitude they experience and the attitude they want to experience. This likely leads to unwanted affective responses. There is however a difference between dissonance and ambivalence: an ambivalent attitude holder has not yet commited by making a choice between the opposing beliefs. In dissonance, you commit to behavoir that is in conflict with your attitude. This is a difference between judgment and choice, a difference in the level of commitment. 

Does it matter if you have to choose? 

The mere anticipation of commitment can already lead to feelings of conflict. Conflict between values can lead to a negative affect. When you don't have to choose, the commitment can remain low, so there is less discomfort even when you feel ambivalent. A person will feel discomfort as long as they have a choice with conflicting evaluations, which they try to integrate in to one goal. When you only have to evaluate the conflicting beliefs, you feel less discomfort then when you have to make a decision based on the ambivalent beliefs. 

When does choosing help? 

To get rid of the unpleasant feeling, you have to achieve the integration goal. You can do that by making a choice. The cognitive dissonance theory sais that ambivalent attitude holders bring their attitude in accordance with their choice. They develop an attitude after making the decision. Unfortunately, choosing is not enough. It is not the choice itself that reduces ambivalence but the cognitive processes that are associated with it. You need to cognitively elaborate. Study shows that cognitive load during activation leads to lower levels of ambivalence. Cognitive load during evaluation, however, leads to higher levels of ambivalence. During activation, cognitive load curtails the development of an ambivalent attitude structure because the conflicting information is not processed thoroughly enough. During evaluation, cognitive load hinders the process of ambivalence reduction, thereby leading to relatively high levels of ambivalence when compared to the control group.

What is the importance of the anticipated consequences? 

People experience dissonance when they feel responsible for negative consequences of their behavior. Ambivalent attitude holders make a choice based on the possible positive and negative outcomes. Especially negative potential consequences are anticipated, they generally tend to loom larger than the positive ones and negative thoughts carry more weight. When a ambivalent attitude holder remains on the fence, he doesn't have to think about the potential consequences, so the feelings of uncertainty are less. For ambivalent attitude holders who have to make a discrete choice, the relation between ambivalence and physiological arousal is fully mediated by uncertainty about the possible consequences.

Which emotions are most important in the decision making? 

Emotions such as guilt, disappointment, and fear might play a role, but regret is the most directly associated emotion. Regret is a consequence of a decision and it tends to involve a sense of responsibility for the choice. After making a decision, people focus on the unfavorable aspects of the chosen alternative and on the desirable aspect of the other alternative. The experience of regret is related to postdecisional dissonance. Ambivalent attitude holders most likely have the anticipation of regret. Besides, study shows that actions tend to lead to more regret than inaction. Last, regret is an important factor because avoiding to make a decision is a much used coping mechanism for difficult decision, because of the anticipation of regret. 

How do you deal with ambivalence? 

Mostly, ambivalent attitude holders try to tip the balance in one direction to solve the ambivalence. The dissonance theory assumes that people prefer that their attitutes are congruent with their behavior. With an aversive ambivalence, the congruence doesn't refer to attitude and behavior, but to preference for evaluatively congruent beliefs. There are two basic forms of coping with the negative feelings. 

What is Emotion-Focused Coping?

An aversive task can lead to avoidant behavior. Procrastination is related to thoughts about how things could have been better, which is the basis of regret. Avoiding decision making is a succesful way to reduce negative affect. The opportunity to choose an avoidant option mitigates the intensity of emotions. The more emotions are paired with the decision making, the more likely someone is to avoid it. Avoiding the decision making results in less retrospective negative emotion. 

Besides avoiding, another emotionfocues coping strategy is redefining the situation. This can be done by denial of the responsibility. When there is no feeling of responsibility, there can be no feeling of regret. Denying responsibility for the decision may be an effective way to reduce anticipated regret. One way is to convince yourself that it is impossible to resist one type of behavior, for example because of peer pressure. 

What is Problem-Focused Coping?

Avoiding a decision or denying responsibility for this decision is not always possible. A problem-focused coping strategy is to invest effort into making a decision, to increase confidence about your choice. You can change your attitude to minimize the ambivalence. You can do this by actively searching for new cognitions. Ambivalent attitude holders are motivated to process information more thoroughly than less ambivalent attitude holders. Problem-focused coping strategies involve efforts to make the best choice and that ambivalence is related to thorough, systematic processing of information, weighing both sides of the issue.

A less effortful form of problem-focused coping is biased systematic processing. Unbiased systematic processing involves both positive and negative thouths, which need to be integrated. Study suggests that ambivalent attitude holers are more likely to engage in unbiased processing, but also biased processing occurs. The more difficult the decision is, the more prone people are to biased processing. Also, people who are low in tolerance for ambiguity, ofthen take a one-sided approach in information gathering. 

What coping do people choose? 

Which coping someone uses depends on the motivation and the ability. Decision makers have two goals, minimizing the cognitive effort and maximizing the accuracy. The first probably has the upper hand, so they use the emotion-focused coping. When decision is unavoidable, people use the problem-focused coping, but it mostly is paired with anticipated regret. People are flexible in choosing a coping strategy, depending on the results of one coping strategy, they can switch to another. 

What is MAID?

Maid is the Model of Ambivalence-Induces Discomfort, which combines the insights of the ambivalence induced comfort and the coping strategy people use. MAID contains a number of steps. See the model in the article for the routes you can take. 

1. Does a dichotomous choice need to be made? Without a dichotomous choice, potential ambivalence is less likely to result in high levels of felt ambivalence
2. Feelings of uncertainty about the outcomes of a decision, which consist of negative anticipated affective responses, such as regret. 
3. If possible, procrastination will occur. If not, more effort needs to be invested in making a decision.
4. How are the feelings of anticipated regret reduced? One can deny responsibility, if that works, he will have less anticipated regret. 
5. If responsibility is undeniable, and regret is still anticipated, ambivalent attitude holders are motivated to invest time and effort in trying to make the best possible choice.

With sufficient cognittive resources, people will engage in high-effort unbiased systematic processing, but with restricted cognitive resources, people will rely on the low effort route. People thus are flexible in coping with ambivalenceinduced discomfort. 

MAID illustrates that ambivalence is a dynamic process, with ambivalent attitude holders often going through different behavioral and psychological stages that can help them make ambivalence more bearable or, in other cases, eventually lead them to acquire evaluative congruence.

What did they conclude? 

When positive and negative thoughts occur at the same time, both the positive and negative attitude components are activated and that can lead to evaluative conflict or attitudinal ambivalence. Ambivalence can be unpleasant, because when you have to make a choice, both positive and negative thoughts are conflicting. The unpleasant feeling is mainly due to uncertainty about the outcome. We mainly fear the feeling of regret. Ambivalence may be desirable when you don't have to make a choice, being ambivalent is then seen as being fair and knowledgeable. Reducing ambivalence can be done by procrastination, denial of responsibility, unbiased and biased systematic processing, and heuristic processing as the most likely strategies. The MAID shows which coping strategie is most likely.