Measurement of ambivalent and purposeful engagement after aversive social experiences

We describe two ways that participants may react to their internal experiences subsequent to stressful interpersonal interactions: Ambivalent engagement, consisting of attempts to avoid or dismiss the experiences arising from memories of the situation, and purposeful engagement, consisting of effortful attempts to approach the memories and internal experiences associated with the event. In a series of studies employing undergraduate samples, we evaluate a self-report method of measuring these trait-like constructs. The measure shows promising psychometric properties, including adequate to good factorial validity, good internal consistency, good test–retest reliability, and strong convergent and discriminant validity across a variety of theoretically related measures. This method of measuring ambivalent and purposeful engagement should be useful in investigating whether these constructs are related to the development of such disorders as social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, as well as whether purposeful engagement is related to therapeutic change.