The Conflicted Individual: Personality-Based and Domain- Specific Antecedents of Ambivalent Social Attitudes Megan M. Thompson Mark P. Zanna University of Waterloo ABSTRACT Historically, attitude theory and research has assumed that atti- tudes are largely unconflicted and unidimensional summary statements of feel- ings and beliefs. More recent work has reexamined this assumption (Thomp- son, Zanna, & Griffin, in press). The present article details two studies tbat continue to investigate this notion, examining antecedent variables assumed important in the genesis of attitudinal ambivalence. The first study focuses upon personality-based factors such as individuals' Need for Cognition (NFC) and Personal Fear of Invalidity (PFI) (a heightened concern with error). The pattem of results was consistent with our predictions: High NFC was asso- ciated with less ambivalence and high PFI was associated with greater am- bivalence. The second study investigated a domain-specific antecedent. It was predicted that higher involvement would reduce the level of ambivalence ex- perienced. Further, involvement was expected to moderate the efifect of the personality-based antecedents. Again, results confirmed our hypotheses. High Portions of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychologi- cal Association, Montreal, Quebec, June 1988. This research was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) doctoral fellowship to Megan M. Thompson and a research grant from SSHRCC to Mark P. Zanna. We are grateful to David Jamieson, Mike Ross, Jacquie Vorauer, and Wendy Wood for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. We are particularly indebted to the comments of two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this manuscript. Correspondence may be sent to Mark P. Zanna, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1. Megan Thompson is presently a postdoctoral fellow at the Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine, PO Box 2000, North York, Ontario, Canada M3M 3B9. Joumal qf Personality 63:2, June 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Duke University Press. CCC 0022-3506/95/$! .50