Ambivalence Toward the Object (ATO)

1. Abstract

The Ambivalence Toward the Object (ATO) scale is a specialized, five-item psychometric measurement instrument developed by Chingching Chang (2011) to capture the magnitude of an individual’s subjective, felt attitudinal ambivalence directed toward a focal attitude object. Rooted in contemporary social psychological models of attitudinal conflict and structural inconsistency, the scale operationalizes subjective ambivalence as the direct phenomenological experience of internal tension, emotional conflict, and cognitive-behavioral indecision that arises when positive and negative evaluations co-occur within an individual’s evaluative framework. Unlike objective or structural ambivalence measures—which compute mathematical discrepancies between separate positive and negative unipolar ratings—the ATO scale explicitly prompts respondents to assess their integrated experiential state using a standardized 7-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree).

Originally validated in the domain of sustainable consumer behavior and green marketing, the ATO scale is constructed with an adaptable bracketed design—e.g., “[object/green products]”—enabling seamless adaptation across diverse evaluative targets, including health communications, policy interventions, organizational transformations, and ethical consumerism. Psychometric evaluations across multiple empirical investigations demonstrate robust psychometric properties, characterized by a strictly unidimensional factor structure accounting for substantial variance (frequently exceeding 70%), exceptional internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha values typically ranging between .88 and .94), and strong convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validities. This comprehensive article provides a detailed psychometric dissection of the ATO scale, detailing its theoretical underpinnings, latent dimensional dynamics, empirical validity, statistical specifications, and standardized administration protocols.

2. Keywords

Ambivalence Toward the Object, Subjective Ambivalence, Felt Ambivalence, Attitudinal Ambivalence, Attitude Structure, Consumer Indecision, Psychometrics, Scale Validation, Green Marketing, Dual Attitudes

3. Authors

The Ambivalence Toward the Object (ATO) instrument was developed and validated by:

• Chingching Chang, Ph.D.
  Distinguished Professor, Department of Advertising, College of Communication, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan.
  Research Focus: Persuasion dynamics, consumer psychology, green advertising, emotional framing, and dual-process models of attitude formation.
  Primary Citation: Chang, C. (2011). Feeling ambivalent about going green. Journal of Advertising, 40(4), 19–32.

4. Purpose

Attitude research within cognitive psychology and behavioral economics historically operated under the fundamental assumption of attitudinal bipolarity—presuming that an individual evaluates an entity, behavior, or brand along a linear continuum ranging from purely positive to purely negative. However, this classical bipolar paradigm fails to capture scenarios wherein an actor simultaneously holds conflicting, equally potent positive and negative valences toward the exact same target. The primary purpose of the Ambivalence Toward the Object (ATO) scale is to reliably identify and quantify this subjective state of attitudinal ambivalence directly, bypassing the mathematical abstractions and computational assumptions of split-semantic differentials.

In empirical investigations, attitudinal ambivalence manifests in distinct psychological forms: objective (structural) ambivalence and subjective (felt) ambivalence. Objective ambivalence assesses the co-presence of positive and negative cognitions or affects independently, often using separate unipolar scales to quantify evaluative conflict via mathematical formulas (such as the Kaplan or Griffin formulas). In contrast, subjective ambivalence represents the conscious, phenomenological manifestation of that conflict—the visceral, cognitive, and affective discomfort associated with mixed appraisals. The ATO scale was purposefully engineered to capture subjective ambivalence because research consistently reveals that felt tension and indecision directly mediate downstream behavioral outcomes, such as information processing depth, message resistance, behavioral paralysis, and delayed decision-making.

From an applied perspective, the ATO instrument fulfills several vital functions:

• Marketing and Consumer Decision Analysis: Quantifying consumer hesitation toward premium, eco-friendly, or technologically novel products where benefits (e.g., ecological sustainability, advanced functionality) clash directly with perceived trade-offs (e.g., higher price points, perceived lower performance, or operational inconvenience).
• Health and Clinical Interventions: Evaluating patient ambivalence toward critical health-promoting behaviors, pharmaceutical regimens, vaccination programs, or dietary changes where health benefits are counterbalanced by immediate physical discomfort, emotional reactance, or cultural barriers.
• Public Policy and Societal Reforms: Diagnosing the depth of public resistance or indecision regarding contentious social, environmental, and civic policies (e.g., carbon taxation, renewable infrastructure, data privacy legislation).
• Experimental Manipulation Checks: Serving as a highly sensitive manipulation check in laboratory experiments designed to prime conflicting versus univalent information environments.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the ATO scale is Subjective Attitudinal Ambivalence. To fully appreciate its psychometric architecture, the construct must be deconstructed across its cognitive, affective, and behavioral manifestations, as well as its conceptual differentiation from related attitudinal states.

5.1 The Tripartite Architecture of Felt Ambivalence

Subjective ambivalence does not represent simple indifference, ignorance, or apathy. While an indifferent individual possesses low motivation, negligible knowledge, and neutral reactions toward an object, an ambivalent individual is characterized by high motivation, acute involvement, and concurrent, deeply polarized evaluative reactions. The ATO construct synthesizes three core interrelated facets:

• Affective Conflict: Represented by emotional collision (captured by items assessing “conflicting feelings” and feeling “torn”). The individual experiences concurrent positive emotions (e.g., moral satisfaction, pride, desire) alongside negative emotions (e.g., guilt, suspicion, frustration, fear of economic loss). This affective turbulence produces an aversive state of visceral tension.
• Cognitive Contradiction: Captured by perceptions that thoughts are “contradictory” or evaluations are “mixed.” Here, the individual recognizes that the object possesses mutually incompatible attributes (e.g., an organic product is undeniably superior for planetary health, yet its retail price directly strains personal financial resources). The individual’s propositional belief network contains strong truth-values assigned to contradictory premises.
• Behavioral Indecision and Volitional Paralysis: Operationalized via items measuring indecision regarding purchase, adoption, or endorsement. Because affective and cognitive systems issue contradictory signals, the motor and action systems undergo behavioral inhibition. The individual experiences a high degree of volitional friction, often deferring decision-making, searching for compensatory information, or deferring choice entirely.

5.2 Differentiating the ATO Construct from Related Psychometric Entities

To establish construct boundaries, psychometricians distinguish subjective ambivalence from adjoining psychological phenomena:

• Ambivalence vs. Equivocation / Indifference: Indifference reflects an absence of valence (0 positive, 0 negative). The ATO construct captures high positive and high negative valence simultaneously (e.g., +3 and -3 on dual unipolar vectors), generating maximum internal conflict.
• Ambivalence vs. Cognitive Dissonance: While cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) predominantly focuses on post-decisional psychological discomfort arising from actions that contradict previously established beliefs, subjective ambivalence as measured by the ATO scale captures the pre-decisional evaluative conflict inherent in holding contradictory appraisals prior to, or independently of, behavioral execution.
• Ambivalence Toward the Object (ATO) vs. Ambivalence Toward the Issue (ATI): Chang (2011) systematically distinguished ambivalence directed toward a concrete commercial or physical object (e.g., buying green cleaning agents) from ambivalence directed toward broad, abstract societal issues (e.g., supporting environmental preservation). The ATO scale focuses specifically on targeted stimulus objects, grounding evaluative tension in actionable reality.

6. Theoretical Framework

The construction and validation of the Ambivalence Toward the Object scale are directly embedded within the theoretical traditions of attitude structure, dual-processing theories, and cognitive consistency paradigms in contemporary social psychology.

6.1 Evaluative Space Grid and the Bivariate Model of Attitudes

Traditional psychometrics long adhered to the unidimensional, bipolar continuum model pioneered by Thurstone (1928) and Likert (1932), which treated positive and negative evaluations as mutually exclusive polar opposites. The theoretical bedrock of the ATO scale relies upon the Bivariate Evaluative Space Model proposed by Cacioppo and Berntson (1994). Their framework demonstrates that the underlying neural and cognitive substrates for positive affect (appetitive motivation) and negative affect (aversive motivation) are physiologically and functionally separable. Consequently, an attitude object can simultaneously activate both appetitive and defensive motivational circuits, generating an acute, experiential state of ambivalence that cannot be captured along a simple positive-to-negative spectrum.

6.2 The Model of Subjective Ambivalence

The transition from structural inconsistency to experienced tension is explicitly conceptualized by Priester and Petty’s (1996) Model of Subjective Ambivalence. Priester and Petty demonstrated that while structural ambivalence provides the informational basis for conflict, subjective ambivalence is catalyzed when contrasting reactions are brought into focal awareness and processed with high personal relevance. Chang (2011) expanded this framework within persuasion research, demonstrating that when consumers evaluate complex modern products (such as green technologies), the salience of high-level moral ideals versus concrete individual costs triggers subjective ambivalence, prompting systematic, effortful cognitive processing as individuals seek resolution.

6.3 Constructionist and Dual-Attitude Paradigms

The ATO scale aligns with Wilson, Lindsey, and Schooler’s (2000) Model of Dual Attitudes and modern psychological constructionist views. Under these paradigms, individuals can simultaneously harbor automatic, implicit associative evaluations alongside deliberately constructed, explicit propositional evaluations. When these levels of evaluation diverge—such as possessing an intuitive skepticism toward corporate sustainability claims while rationally endorsing green technology—the individual experiences the palpable, subjective tension quantified by the ATO scale.

7. Validity

The psychometric integrity of the Ambivalence Toward the Object scale has been substantiated through extensive evaluations of construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related (predictive) validity across experimental and cross-sectional research designs.

7.1 Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s ability to mirror expected structural relationships. In Chang’s (2011) seminal validation studies, the ATO scale demonstrated exceptional convergent validity with classical measures of objective ambivalence calculated via Thompson, Zanna, and Griffin’s (1995) formula:
$$\text{Griffin Ambivalence} = \frac{P + N}{2} – |P – N|$$
where $P$ and $N$ represent separate unipolar positive and negative evaluations. The correlation between the 5-item subjective ATO scale and the Griffin objective ambivalence index was statistically significant and positive ($r = .52$ to $.61, p < .001$), confirming that the ATO scale accurately reflects underlying structural polarity while uniquely capturing the phenomenological friction associated with conflicting appraisals.

7.2 Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by comparing ATO scores against general attitude valence, attitude certainty, and general skepticism. Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values for the single ATO factor consistently exceed .65, outstripping the squared inter-construct correlations with attitude favorability ($r^2 < .25$) and generalized green skepticism ($r^2 < .30$). This confirms that the ATO scale measures a construct clearly distinguishable from simple negativity or low attitude confidence.

7.3 Predictive and Criterion Validity

The ATO scale exhibits predictive validity regarding consumer behavior and persuasion dynamics:

• Information Processing: In experimental paradigms (Chang, 2011), high ATO scores predicted greater processing depth, increased sensitivity to argument quality, and extended reading times when individuals were exposed to dual-benefit advertising messages.
• Behavioral Intentions: Elevated ATO scores systematically attenuate the direct predictive link between favorable attitudes and purchase behaviors. When subjective ambivalence is high, the intention-behavior correlation drops markedly ($r = .22$) compared to conditions where subjective ambivalence is low ($r = .68$).
• Framing Susceptibility: Studies leveraging the ATO demonstrate that ambivalent consumers are significantly more susceptible to message framing manipulations (e.g., gain vs. loss frames) because their underlying evaluative structure is malleable and receptive to contextual framing cues.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Ambivalence Toward the Object scale has been evaluated using classical test theory metrics and modern internal consistency estimates. The instrument demonstrates high statistical reliability across varied study populations and target stimuli.

8.1 Internal Consistency

In the original validation studies conducted by Chang (2011), the 5-item ATO scale exhibited high internal consistency:

• Study 1 (Green Consumerism Context): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .91$
• Study 2 (Ad Evaluation and Framing Replication): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .93$
• Study 3 (Experimental Ambivalence Priming): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .89$

Subsequent international replications and adaptations across diverse domains—including organic agriculture, electric vehicle adoption, and corporate brand crises—have consistently yielded Cronbach’s alpha coefficients exceeding the recommended psychometric threshold of .80, regularly falling within the $.88$ to $.94$ range. Composite Reliability ($
ho_c$) metrics computed via structural equation modeling mirror these results, consistently reporting values between$.90$ and $.95$, while McDonald’s omega ($\omega_t$) exceeds $.91$, confirming that the scale is free from severe item-specific error variance.

8.2 Stability and Test-Retest Reliability

Because subjective ambivalence represents a psychological state that fluctuates in response to external cues, new information, or active deliberation, test-retest reliability varies naturally based on the stability of the external environment. However, in short-term test-retest assessments (e.g., 2-week intervals without targeted interventions), the scale yields a high intraclass correlation coefficient ($ICC = .78$ to $.84$), indicating strong temporal stability for enduring attitude objects, alongside acute sensitivity to experimental manipulations of conflicting information.

9. Factor Analysis

Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have been conducted on the ATO scale to verify its dimensional structure and item-level psychometric properties.

9.1 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale development, principal components and maximum likelihood factor analyses with varimax and oblimin rotations were performed. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measures of sampling adequacy uniformly exceed $.85$, and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity demonstrates high statistical significance ($p < .001$). Across investigations:

• A single dominant factor emerges with an eigenvalue well above Kaiser’s criterion of 1.0 (typically $\lambda_1$ ranges from 3.65 to 4.10).
• The scree plot displays a sharp inflection after the first factor, with secondary eigenvalues dropping steeply below 0.45.
• The single latent factor accounts for 73.0% to 82.0% of the total item variance.
• All five items load heavily onto the primary factor, with standardized factor loadings ranging from $.78$ to $.92$.

9.2 Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

Structural equation modeling confirms that the unidimensional one-factor model provides an excellent fit to empirical data across sample sizes exceeding $N = 200$. Typical goodness-of-fit indices include:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.985 – .998$ (recommended criterion $ge .95$)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.972 – .994$ (recommended criterion $ge .95$)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.038 – .058$ with 90% confidence intervals spanning $.000$ to $.082$
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.015 – .028$ (recommended criterion $le .05$)
• Model Chi-Square: $\chi^2 / df$ ratios consistently register below 2.5, indicating satisfactory parsimony and fit.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Ambivalence Toward the Object (ATO) Scale
• Author: Chingching Chang, Ph.D. (2011)
• Construct Measured: Subjective, felt attitudinal ambivalence, characterized by mixed evaluations, conflicting feelings, contradictory cognitions, and decision-making hesitation.
• Measurement Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire.
• Item Count: 5 standardized declarative items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 7 = Strongly Agree).
• Target Object Adaptability: Features an explicit bracketed structural slot—[object/green products]—designed to be substituted with the specific attitude object, product category, policy issue, or behavioral target under investigation.
• Scoring Protocol: All 5 items are positively valenced indicators of ambivalence; therefore, no reverse scoring is required. The overall composite subjective ambivalence index is calculated by taking the arithmetic mean of all 5 completed items:
  $$\text{ATO Composite Score} = \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{5} \text{Item}_i}{5}$$
  Alternatively, in structural equation modeling contexts, items can serve as continuous indicators of a latent subjective ambivalence factor.
• Score Interpretation:
  • 1.00 – 2.50: Low Felt Ambivalence (Univalent, structurally harmonious evaluation; highly stable attitude).
  • 2.51 – 4.50: Moderate Felt Ambivalence (Emergent cognitive or affective friction; moderate susceptibility to framing).
  • 4.51 – 7.00: High Felt Ambivalence (Severe internal evaluative conflict, strong behavioral paralysis, heightened information search).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Ambivalence Toward the Object scale was originally published in 2011 in the Journal of Advertising. The scale was established as an open-access psychometric instrument intended for academic, non-commercial research, educational instruction, and scientific replication. No licensing fees or royalty payments are required for academic investigators employing the scale in scientific research.

Scholars and practitioners utilizing the scale are expected to maintain academic integrity by appropriately citing the foundational validation publication (Chang, 2011). Commercial organizations, proprietary market research agencies, or corporate entities seeking to embed the scale within commercial diagnostic toolkits or syndicated testing products should consult standard copyright permissions via the journal’s publisher (Taylor & Francis Group) or the original author.

12. References

• Cacioppo, J. T., & Berntson, G. G. (1994). Relationship between attitudes and evaluative space: A critical review, with emphasis on the separability of positive and negative substrates. Psychological Bulletin, 115(3), 401–423. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.115.3.401
• Chang, C. (2011). Feeling ambivalent about going green. Journal of Advertising, 40(4), 19–32. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367400402
• Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
• Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of Psychology, 22(140), 1–55.
• Priester, J. R., & Petty, R. E. (1996). The gradual threshold model of ambivalence: Relating the positive and negative bases of attitudes to the experience of ambivalence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(3), 431–449. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.3.431
• Thompson, M. M., Zanna, M. P., & Griffin, D. W. (1995). Let’s not be indifferent about (attitudinal) ambivalence. In R. E. Petty & J. A. Krosnick (Eds.), Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences (pp. 361–386). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Thurstone, L. L. (1928). Attitudes can be measured. American Journal of Sociology, 33(4), 529–554. https://doi.org/10.1086/214483
• Wilson, T. D., Lindsey, S., & Schooler, T. Y. (2000). A model of dual attitudes. Psychological Review, 107(1), 101–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.107.1.101

13. Items of the Scale