Abstract
Investigated the relationship of attitudinal ambivalence, confidence in attitudes, and processing information about new or unfamiliar attitude objects with positive or negative attributes. Ambivalence was manipulated in 2 experiments, involving 132 college students, by providing Ss with either evaluatively inconsistent or consistent information about fictional shampoos. As predicted, in both experiments more consistency between the attitude toward buying the shampoo and the behavioral intention was obtained in the ambivalent condition than in the nonambivalent condition. Exp 2 also provided data confirming the postulated mediating processes.