Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
7324431 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2016 13 Pages PDF
Abstract
The ability of attitudinal ambivalence and certainty to individually predict an attitude's stability over time has received mixed support. We proposed that ambivalence and certainty moderate one another's relationship with temporal attitude stability. That is, we hypothesized an interaction between these two attitude strength variables to predict stability over time. In three studies, we used two-stage designs in which attitudes were assessed twice with an interval ranging from one to twelve months between measurements. Across these longitudinal studies examining different attitude objects, greater certainty was associated with greater stability across different time points as ambivalence decreased, and greater ambivalence was associated with greater instability as attitude certainty increased. Notably, the results held across health-related, social, and real-world political topics.
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