ABSTRACT
The social psychology of attitude ambivalence has a bifurcated history. In 1972, Kalman Kaplan focused on the concept of ambivalence, and proposed a method for its measurement. The ensuing 20 years was a period of relative dormancy for the concept, but then a resurgence of theoretical and empirical scrutiny emerged in the early 1990s. My goal in this chapter is to summarize the extant operationalizations and conceptualizations of ambivalence, while describing limitations of these approaches. I will then describe theory and research supporting the concept of multivalence, which is a broader and more inclusive approach to interpreting conflicted attitudes.
