ABSTRACT
While the notion of ambivalence has been present in Western literature since ancient Roman times, it became the topic of scienti®c study, in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, only at the beginning of the twentieth century. In those early studies ambivalence was primarily considered a symptom of mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia, Bleuler, 1910; Freud, 1912, both cited in Laplanche & Pontalis, 1968). In the last few decades, ambivalenceÐnamely, a reaction `that contains both positive and negative elements' (Olson & Zanna, 1993, p. 123; see also Bell & Esses, 1997; Jonas, Diehl, & Broemer, 1997)Ðhas been the object of much speculation and research in different areas of social psychology, including attitudes (see Jonas, Broemer, & Diehl, 2000; Thompson, Zanna, & Grif®n, 1995, for reviews), stereotypes and prejudice (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002; Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986; McConahay, 1986), persuasion (e.g., Broemer, 2002; Cavazza & Butera, 2008; Maio, Bell, & Esses, 1996; Petty, Fleming, & White, 1999), minority in¯uence (e.g., Mucchi-Faina, 2000; Mucchi-Faina & Cicoletti, 2006; Mucchi-Faina & Pagliaro, 2008), interpersonal communication (Mongrain & Vettese, 2003), and inter-group evaluations (Mucchi-Faina, Costarelli, & Romoli, 2002; Mucchi-Faina, Pacilli, Pagliaro, & Alparone, 2009).
