Exploring Message-Induced Ambivalence and Its Correlates: A Focus on Message Environment, Issue Salience, and Framing

Scholars across the social sciences (psychology and political science) have recently started to broaden the approach to concept of attitudes. These scholars have focused on the concept of attitudinal ambivalence, which is defined as people holding both positive and negative attitudes toward attitude objects. However, communication scholars have generally ignored this concept.;Recently, communication scholars have emphasized the importance of looking at the complementary effects of consuming divergent messages on people's attitudes and beliefs. Although studies have started to look at the complementary effects of media, it is necessary to examine the relationship between the complexity of a person's communication environment and the complexity of their attitudes. Therefore, this study begins the process connecting the complexity of people's communication environment and the complexity of their attitude structures.;The major goal of this dissertation is to look at the generation of ambivalence by looking at four important factors: (a) the relationship between specific media outlets relative to the generation of potential ambivalence, (b) how different individual difference variables moderate the relationship between different media outlets and the generation of ambivalence, (c) pinpointing the message variables that may lead people to the generation of ambivalence, and (d) how media, ambivalence fit into a larger communication process focused on different political outcome variables.;To study this issue, both survey and experimental data from a nationally representative sample focused on the issues of global warming and plastic pollution were collected and analyzed. Results of the survey show a relationship between viewing one-sided conservative and liberal programming and two-sided programming on people's level of attitudinal ambivalence. These results also show conditional indirect effects of viewing these different programs. Specifically, one-sided conservative programming decreases ambivalence among conservatives and leads them to hold strong policy positions. In contrast, viewing the same programming increases ambivalence among liberals and leads them to hold to weaker policy positions. Additional analyses found similar effects for watching two-sided programming (i.e., network news). Viewing network news was associated with increased ambivalence and weaker policy positions among conservatives and decreased ambivalence and holding stronger policy positions among liberals.;Analyses from the experimental data found a three-way interaction for viewing competing messages for individuals high in Need for Cognitive Closure (NFC) when they lacked a crystallized opinion on the issue (plastic pollution). Those high in NFC showed a decreases in ambivalence when presented with two negative stories on an unfamiliar topic. In addition, these same individuals showed an increase in ambivalence when presented with two conflicting stories on a low salience issue. These results indicate that those with a high NFC tend to seize on new information when they lack a crystallized opinion.;This dissertation concludes with a summary and discussion of results, and places these findings within the context of extant ambivalence literature. It also proposes future lines of research that apply a communicative lens to the study of attitudinal ambivalence. There are also discussions of the relative strengths and weaknesses of this research effort.