Individual Differences in Feelings of Certainty Surrounding Mixed Emotions

Abstract

Without independent measures of positivity and negativity, ambivalence (the simultaneous experience of positive and negative) can be mistaken as neutrality in most experimental designs. More concerningly, certain methods and viewpoints conflate ambivalence with uncertainty over how one feels. But ambivalence is not the same as uncertainty, and it has been shown that one can be quite certain about ambivalent attitudes (Hong & Lee, 2010; Schneider & Schwarz, 2017). It has also been found that ambivalence with and without certainty of those positions leads to different long-term stability of those feelings (Luttrell, Petty, & Briñol, 2020; Van Harreveld, Rutjens, Rotteveel, Nordgren, & Van Der Pligt, 2009). There are vast differences from person to person in how mixed feelings relate to positive, or negative, effects on well-being. No studies have directly tested for certainty of mixed feelings being related to individual personality differences. The current study will test how individual differences relate to the uncertainty people feel when faced with ambivalent situations