Abstract
Prior research theorizes that ambivalence makes opinions about an object unreliable in the sense of being haphazard, unpredictable, or variable. As such, ambivalence is a prominent explanation for seeming nonattitudes in opinion surveys. This study proposes an alternative account of the effects of ambivalence on attitudes. It posits that people who are ambivalent about an issue split the difference between their conflicting considerations by taking a position near the middle of the bipolar opinion scale, which reflects a moderate attitude. I show how the widely-used method of modeling the supposed variability of ambivalent opinions conflates variability and moderation. This problem is addressed by modeling variability and moderation of attitudes separately, without this confound. Using this strategy in analyses involving four datasets and three policy domains, the results show that ambivalence is associated with moderate, not variable, attitudes. Ambivalence does not increase the variability of opinions but, rather, moves them quite predictably toward the middle of the response scale. The results recast our understanding of the effects of ambivalence on political opinions and raise questions about the ability of ambivalence to explain nonattitudes in surveys.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In this study “moderation” refers to opinions that tend toward the center of a bipolar attitude scale, not an interaction between variables.
The BHCM may be appropriate in other contexts, such as when a choice is inherently binary.
Most studies of ambivalence address the causes or consequences of ambivalence as it occurs at a single point in time. Scholars have only recently begun to evaluate how and why ambivalence might change over time (see Rudolph 2011).
Anderson’s model would be a better reflection of the memory based model if r were an average based on a sampling of considerations rather than deterministic.
Readers interested in a more detailed discussion should consult Alvarez and Brehm’s first (1995) study using this method, the online technical appendices of their book (2002), or Greene (1993). The appendices to Alvarez and Brehm (2002) are available online at http://press.princeton.edu/alvarez/. The mechanics of the ordered HCM are discussed in Alvarez and Brehm (1998).
Attitude extremity, like ambivalence, is one of several dimensions of attitude strength. Others include subjective certainty, personal importance, and accessibility, to name a few (see Miller and Peterson 2004 for a review). Research shows that these and other dimensions of attitude strength are often correlated, and sometimes causally related, but are empirically distinct: They do not reflect a single underlying “attitude strength” construct (Krosnick et al. 1993).
Research on moderate opinions has raised questions about the meaning of middle responses in particular (e.g., “neither favor nor oppose”). Some have suggested that middle responses could reflect something other than neutrality, such as indifference, “don’t know,” an attempt to avoid taking a potentially controversial position, or satisficing which, in this context, means offering an opinion that will appear reasonable without having to put much thought into it (Krosnick 1991). However, methodological research that addresses these potential alternative interpretations of middle responses fails to support them, suggesting instead that most respondents who adopt a middle position really are neutral (O’Muircheartaigh et al. 2000). In one recent study, Malhotra et al. (2009, p. 317) conclude that “on balance, respondents who placed themselves at the midpoint belonged there.”
Participants in the lab study were recruited from political science courses. The telephone survey was conducted by a professional interviewers who work for the Ohio State Center for Survey Research.
Attempts to discern other ways that the framing manipulations might have been systematically significant, such as including them in the variance component of the OHCM, and through interactions, proved fruitless, both in the OHCM’s and other models.
One could randomly assign these omitted respondents to the “favor” and “oppose” categories, but since they did not choose these responses, this is the equivalent of adding a proportional amount of random noise to the data.
This does not not necessarily imply that the attitudes of highly-ambivalent respondents are more predictable than respondents with extreme opinions.
In this analysis, felt ambivalence might be conflated with the extent to which individuals have considered the issue in the past. In the lab data there is a measure of prior thought about the issue that allows me to address this. When prior thought is included in the model, its effects are nonsignificant and the coefficient on felt ambivalence increases rather than decreases.
Respondents in the Blacks condition were coded Dummy1 = 1 and Dummy2 = 0. Those in the Asian Americans condition were coded Dummy1 = 0 and Dummy2 = 1. Those in the women condition were coded Dummy1 = 0 and Dummy2 = 0.
Respondents in condition “a” were coded Dummy1 = 1 and Dummy2 = 0. Those in condition “b” were coded Dummy1 = 0 and Dummy2 = 1. And those in condition “c” were coded Dummy1 = 0 and Dummy2 = 0.
The appendix is available online at http://press.princeton.edu/alvarez/appd.pd. The five models were replicated as faithfully as possible based on the descriptions of them in the book and technical appendix. Even so, there were some differences between the results presented here and those in the book. They may have resulted from an ambiguity in the description of Alvarez and Brehm’s equality scale, which was used to construct the measure of ambivalence between equality and individualism. Their measure of equality is a scale of three items. However, they only identify one of the three. The question they identified asked how much people favor or oppose “more money being spent to reduce unemployment.” The two other items that I identified independently as indicators of support for equality, and included in the scale used here, were taken from a series of questions that asked about the importance of various “goals for America.” These two items were based on responses to the questions that asked about the importance of “equality for women” and “equality for Blacks.” Among all the other items in the survey, these two seem the most reasonable and appropriate as measures of support for equality. Another small ambiguity was that Alvarez and Brehm include in their variance models a measure of “financial status” that is not discussed in the text or tables. For this reason, it is not clear how this variable is measured. In this replication financial status was measured using a question about family income.
References
Abelson, R. P. (1995). Attitude extremity. In: R. E. Petty & J. A. Krosnick (Eds.), Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences (pp. 25–41). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Achen, C. H. (2002). Toward a new political methodology: Microfoundations and ART. In Annual Reviews, 5, 423–450.
Alvarez, R. M., & Brehm, J. (1995). American ambivalence towards abortion policy: Development of a heteroskedastic probit model of competing values. American Journal of Political Science, 39, 1055–1082.
Alvarez, R. M., & Brehm, J. (1997). Are Americans ambivalent towards racial policies? American Journal of Political Science, 41, 345–374.
Alvarez, R. M., & Brehm, J. (1998). Speaking in two voices: American equivocation about the Internal Revenue Service. American Journal of Political Science, 42, 418–452.
Alvarez, R. M., & Brehm, J. (2002). Hard choices, easy answers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Alvarez, R. M., Brehm, J., & Wilson, C. (2003). Uncertainty and American public opinion. In: B. C. Burden (Eds.), Uncertainty in American politics (pp. 161–185). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, N. H. (1973). Information integration theory applied to attitudes about US Presidents. Journal of Educational Psychology, 64(1), 1–8.
Anderson, N. H. (1981). Foundations of information integration theory. New York: Academic Press.
Armitage, C. J., & Conner, M. (2000). Attitudinal ambivalence: A test of three key hypotheses. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 11, 1421–1432.
Basinger, S. J., & Lavine, H. (2005). Ambivalence, information, and electoral choice. American Political Science Review, 99, 169–184.
Bassili, J. N., & Fletcher, J. F. (1991). Response-time measurement in survey research a method for cati and a new look at nonattitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55(3), 331–346.
Braumoeller, Bear F. (2006). Explaining variance; or, stuck in a moment we can’t get out of. Political Analysis, 14, 268–290.
Breckler, S. J. (2004). Hold still while i measure your attitude: Assessment in the throes of ambivalence (pp. 77–92). New York: Springer.
Citrin, J., & Luks, S. (2005). Patriotic to the core? American ambivalence about America (pp. 127–147). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Craig, S. C., Kane, J. G., & Martinez, M. D. (2002). Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t: Citizens’ ambivalence about abortion. Political Psychology, 23, 285–301.
Craig, S. C., & Martinez, M. D. (2005). Ambivalence and the structure of political opinion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Craig, S. C., Martinez, M. D., & Kane, J. G. (2005a). Ambivalence and response instability: A panel study (pp. 83–102). New York: Palgrave McMillan.
Craig, S. C., Martinez, M. D., Kane, J. G., & Gainous, J. (2005b). Core values, value conflict, and citizens’ ambivalence about gay rights. Political Research Quarterly, 58, 5–17.
Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt.
Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (2007). The advantages of an inclusive definition of attitude. Social Cognition, 25(5), 582–602.
Federico, C. M. (2004). Predicting attitude extremity: The interactive effects of expertise and the need to evaluate and their mediation by evaluative integration. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1281–1294.
Federico, C. M. (2005). Education, ideology, and racial ambivalence: Conflict amplification or conflict resolution (pp. 83–102). New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Feldman, S. (1989). Measuring issue preferences: The problem of response instability. Political Analysis, 1, 25–60.
Feldman, S. (1995). Answering survey questions: The measurement and meaning of public opinion. In: M. Lodge, & K. M. McGraw (Eds.), Political judgment: Structure and process (pp. 249–270). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Feldman, S., & Zaller, J. R. (1992). The political culture of ambivalence: Ideological responses to the Welfare State. American Journal of Political Science, 36, 268–307.
Flelcher, J. F., & Chalmers, M.-C. (1991). Attitudes of Canadians toward affirmative action: Opposition, value pluralism, and nonattitudes. Political Behavior, 13(1), 67–95.
Glasgow, G. (2008). Attitude instability due to ambivalence: A reconsideration of recent evidence. Unpublished manuscript, Santa Barbara: University of California.
Greene, S. (2005). The structure of Partisan attitudes: Reexamining Partisan dimensionality and ambivalence. Political Psychology, 26, 809–822.
Greene, W. H. (1993). Econometric analysis. New York: Macmillan.
Harvey, A. C. (1976). Estimating regression models with multiplicative heteroscedasticity. Econometrica, 44, 461–465.
Hass, R. G., Katz, I., Rizzo, N., Bailey, J., & Eisenstadt, D. (1991). Cross-racial appraisal as related to attitude ambivalence and cognitive complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(1), 82–933.
Hass, R. G., Katz, I., Rizzo, N., Bailey, J., & Moore, L. (1992). When racial ambivalence evokes negative affect, using a disguised measure of mood. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18(6), 786–797.
Hochschild, J. L. (1981). What’s fair? American beliefs about distributive justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holbrook, A. L., & Krosnick, J. A. (2005). Meta-psychological versus operative measures of ambivalence. In: Stephen C. C., & Michael D. Martinez (eds.), Ambivalence and the structure of political opinion (pp. 73–103). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jacoby, W. G. (2006). Value choices and American public opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 706–723.
Judd, C. M., & Lusk, C. M. (1984). Knowledge structures and evaluative judgments: Effects of structural variables on judgmental extremity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(6), 1193–1207.
Kam, C. D. (2006). Political campaigns and open-minded thinking. Journal of Politics, 68(4), 931–945.
Katz, I., & Hass, R. G. (1988). Racial ambivalence and American value conflict: Correlational and priming studies of dual cognitive structures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(6), 893–905.
Keele, L., & Park, D. K. (2006a). Ambivalent about ambivalence: A re-examination of heteroskedastic probit models.
Keele, L., & Park, D. K. (2006b). Difficult choices: An evaluation of heterogenous choice models. Paper prepared for presentation at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.
Keele, L., & Wolak, J. (2006). Value conflict and volatility in party identification. British Journal of Political Science, 36(04), 671–690.
Keele, L., & Wolak, J. (2008). Contextual sources of ambivalence. Political Psychology, 29(5), 653–673.
Kelley, S. Jr., & Mirer, T. W. (1974). The simple act of voting. The American Political Science Review, 68, 572–591.
Kriner, D. L. (2006). Examining variance in presidential approval: The case of FDR in world war II. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70(1), 23–47.
Krosnick, J. A. (1991). Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude measures in surveys. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5(3), 213–236.
Krosnick, J. A., Boninger, D. S., Chuang, Y. C., Berent, M. K., & Carnot, C. G. (1993). Attitude strength: One construct or many related constructs?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1132–1132.
Lavine, H. (2001). The electoral consequences of ambivalence toward presidential candidates. American Journal of Political Science, 45, 915–929.
Lavine, H. (2004). Attitude ambivalence in the realm of politics. Vol. Contemporary perspectives on the psychology of attitudes (pp. 93–120). New York: Psychology Press.
Lavine, H., Parker-Stephen, E., & Steenbergen, M. R. (2005). Ambivalence and economic perceptions. Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association.
Lavine, H., Steenbergen, M., & Johnson, C. (Forthcoming). The Ambivalent Partisan: How Critical Loyalty Promotes Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Liberman, A., & Chaiken, S. (1991). Value conflict and thought-induced attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 203–216.
Linville, P. W. (1982). The complexity-extremity effect and age-based stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(2), 193–211.
Malhotra, N., Krosnick, J.A., & Thomas, R. K. (2009). Optimal design of branching questions to measure bipolar constructs. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73(2), 304–324.
Martinez, M. D., Gainous, J., & Craig, S. C. (2007). Measuring ambivalence about government in the 2006 ANES pilot study. Paper prepared for presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago, IL.
McGraw, K. M. (1995). Value conflict and susceptibility to persuasion: The impact of value-justified survey questions. Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.
McGraw, K. M., & Bartels, B. (2005). Ambivalence toward American political institutions. In: S. C. Craig, & M. D. Martinez (Eds.), Ambivalence and the structure of political opinion, pp. 105–126. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
McGraw, K. M., Hasecke, E., & Conger, K. (2003). Ambivalence, uncertainty, and processes of candidate evaluation. Political Psychology, 24, 421–448.
Meffert, Michael F., Guge, Michael & Lodge, Milton (2004). Good, bad, and ambivalent: The consequences of multidimensional political attitudes. In: W. E. Saris, & P. Sniderman (Eds.), Studies in public opinion: Attitudes, nonattitudes, measurement error, and change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Millar, M. G., & Tesser, A. (1986). Thought-induced attitude change: The effects of schema structure and commitment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(2), 259–269.
Miller, J. M., & Peterson, D. A. M. (2004). Theoretical and empirical implications of attitude strength. Journal of Politics, 66, 847–867.
Mutz, D. C. (2002a). The consequences of cross-cutting social networks for political participation. American Journal of Political Science, 46, 836–855.
Mutz, D. C. (2002b). Cross-cutting social networks: Testing democratic theory in practice. American Political Science Review, 96, 111–126.
O’Muircheartaigh, C., Krosnick, J. A., & Helic, A. (2000). Middle alternatives, acquiescence, and the quality of questionnaire data. Working Paper. University of Chicago.
Page, B. I., & Shapiro, R. Y. (1992). The rational public: Fifty years of trends in Americans’ policy preferences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Peffley, M., Knigge, P., & Hurwitz, J. (2001). A multiple values model of political tolerance. Political Research Quarterly, 54(2), 379–406.
Peterson, R. S. (1994). The role of values in predicting fairness judgments and support of affirmative action. Journal of Social Issues, 50(4), 95–115.
Riketta, M. (2000). Discriminative validation of numerical indices of attitude ambivalence. Current Research in Social Psychology, 5, 63–83.
Rudolph, T. J. (2005). Group attachment and the reduction of value-driven ambivalence. Political Psychology, 26, 905–928.
Rudolph, T. J. (2011). The dynamics of ambivalence. American Journal of Political Science, 55(3), 561–573.
Schwarz, N. (2007). Attitude construction: Evaluation in context. Social Cognition, 25(5), 638–656.
Sniderman, P. M., Fletcher, J. F., Russell, P., & Tetlock, P. E. (1996). The clash of rights: Liberty, equality, and legitimacy in pluralist democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Steenbergen, M. E., & Brewer, P. R. (2004). The not-so-ambivalent public: Policy attitudes in the political culture of ambivalence (pp. 93–129). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Tetlock, P. E. (1986). A value pluralism model of ideological reasoning. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 50, 819–827.
Thompson, M. M., Zanna, M. P., & Griffin, D. W. (1995). Let’s not be indifferent about (attitudinal) ambivalence. In: R. E. Petty, & J. A. Krosnick (Eds.), Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Tormala, Z. L., & DeSensi, V. L. (2008). The perceived informational basis of attitudes: Implications for subjective ambivalence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(2), 275–287.
Williams, R. (2009). Using heterogeneous choice models to compare logit and probit coefficients across groups. Sociological Methods & Research, 37(4), 531–559.
Zaller, J. R. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zaller, J., & Feldman, S. (1992). A simple theory of the survey response: Answering questions and revealing preferences. American Journal of Political Science, 36, 579–616.
Acknowledgments
For helpful comments and suggestions I wish to thank Robert Franzese, Tobin Grant, Phil Habel, Howie Lavine, Scott McClurg, Kathleen McGraw, Fred Solt, Marco Steenbergen, and Joe Young. I thank Drew Seib for research assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mulligan, K. Variability or Moderation? The Effects of Ambivalence on Political Opinions. Polit Behav 35, 539–565 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-012-9199-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-012-9199-8