[PAPER] Torn but Balanced: Trait Ambivalence is negatively related to Confirmation

[Iris K. Schneider]

Hi everybody, 

Jana Hohnsbehn just published a wonderful paper on the relationship between trait ambivalence and confirmation (bias). The paper is inspired by the Rees et al., 2013 paper and shows that higher trait ambivalence is related to lower confirmation bias over multiple studies and paradigms. I pasted the abstract below. 

Let us know if you have any comments or questions! 

Iris. 

Traditionally, ambivalence has been conceptualized as a negative influence on decision-making (Van Harreveld et al., 2009). Challenging this notion, recent work suggests that ambivalence can be beneficial because it promotes balance in the decision-making process (Rees et al., 2013; Schneider et al., 2021). Specifically, since ambivalence is a state where contrasting sides of an attitude object (i.e., both positive and negative evaluations) are salient, it likely leads to the consideration of more diverse information, thus reducing one-sided thought. However, this research has only focused on state ambivalence. We investigated whether trait ambivalence – the individual tendency to experience ambivalence – is also related to reduced bias in thought. We examined this idea in the domain of confirmation - the tendency to prefer information in accord with one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses while neglecting information that is not (Klayman & Ha, 1987). Using different methods, we examined the relationship between trait ambivalence and confirmation. We present five online studies (total N = 1306) that showed that people with higher trait ambivalence showed less confirmation. This pattern was corroborated by meta-analytic evidence. Together, our work provides evidence that decision-making can benefit from trait ambivalence as it is connected to more disconfirmation.

[Jana Hohnsbehn]

Hi all, 

And you can also find the online version here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886922002410?dgcid=author

As Iris said, let us know about questions and comments!

Best, 

Jana

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<Hohnsbehn2022PAID.pdf>

[Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks]

Congrats!!! This will also be extremely helpful for future studies! 

Jeffrey

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- sent via a tiny mobile device. excuse brevity and/or typos

[Naomi Rothman]

Congratulations! Exciting!

Naomi

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 3, 2022, at 8:27 AM, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks <jeff...@umich.edu> wrote:



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