[Attitude formation: experienced ambivalence, subjective difficulty and response latency in evaluatively inconsistent, consistent and neutral information].

Ambivalent attitudes simultaneously invoke positive and negative evaluations of a single object (e.g., Thompson, Zanna, & Griffin, 1995). Consequently, ambivalent attitudes towards unfamiliar objects should result from evaluative inconsistency of relevant information about the object (Jonas, Diehl, & Brömer, 1997). The present study shows that the formation of novel attitudes on the basis of evaluatively inconsistent information takes longer than the formation of attitudes based upon positive, negative, or neutral information. This impact of ambivalence should be mediated by the perceived difficulty of attitude formation. Need to Evaluate (Jarvis & Petty, 1996), a chronic tendency to form attitudes spontaneously, is assumed to moderate the level of ambivalence, as well as perceived difficulty and attitude response latencies. The hypothesis was tested in a within-subjects design (N = 30). An unfamiliar object was either described by strongly, moderately, or slightly evaluatively inconsistent information or by positive, negative, or neutral information. Furthermore, links to impression formation are illustrated and differences with regard to attitude formation are discussed.