The Yin and Yang of Attitudes and Related Constructs

Much of the literature has examined how dialectical thinking influences the self, emotions, and well-being. How does dialectical thinking affect valenced evaluations of objects outside of the self? This chapter argues that naive dialecticism shapes the internal consistency, cross-situational consistency, and temporal stability of attitudes and related constructs. It begins with a discussion of how dialecticism leads to greater attitudinal ambivalence or “both-valenced” (positive/negative) evaluations of a wide variety of phenomena. It then examines how dialecticism can explain the cultural variation in ingroup favoring versus ingroup derogating tendencies. The difference between cognitive versus affective components and implicit versus explicit levels emerge as important distinctions in elucidating cultural variation in group-based attitudes. The chapter continues with a discussion of how dialecticism can account for cultural differences in cognitive dissonance, intergroup attitudes and relations, and attitude flexibility and change, and topics for future research are proposed.