Internal conflict and prejudice-regulation: Emotional ambivalence buffers against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback.

Becoming aware of bias is essential for prejudice-regulation. However, attempts to make people aware of bias through feedback often elicits defensive reactions that undermine mitigation efforts. In the present article, we introduce state emotional ambivalence-the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions "in the present moment"-as a buffer against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback. Two studies (N = 507) demonstrate that implicit bias feedback (vs. no feedback) increases defensiveness (rating the test as less valid, credible, and objective). However, high (vs. low) state emotional ambivalence, which was independent of bias feedback, attenuates this relationship between bias feedback and defensiveness, accounting for a larger share of the variance than negative emotions alone. In turn, this reduced defensiveness among individuals high (vs. low) in emotional ambivalence was associated with increased awareness of bias in the self and others. Results suggest that state emotional ambivalence is associated with increased bias awareness by creating a mindset in which individuals are less defensive to potentially threatening information about their own implicit racial bias. These results have important implications for research on stereotyping and prejudice, emotional ambivalence and psychological conflict, and defensiveness.

The push-and-pull of frenemies: When and why ambivalent relationships lead to helping and harming.

We integrated theories of social exchange and emotional ambivalence to explain how ambivalent relationships influence interpersonally directed helping and harming behaviors. Using multiple methodologies, including a study of student teams, an experiment, and a quasifield study of retail employees, we compared ambivalent relationships with positive and negative relationships. Our three studies provide convergent evidence that ambivalent relationships with coworkers are positively related to both helping and harming behaviors. These dueling effects were mediated by the experience of ambivalent emotions. We also demonstrate that ambivalent emotions, and their downstream behavioral effects were amplified when individuals in ambivalent relationships had strong affiliative interpersonal goals. Overall, our findings have implications for theory on the relational antecedents of helping and harming, social exchange theory, and the effects of ambivalence in organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Affective expressions in groups and inferences about members' relational well-being: The effects of socially engaging and disengaging emotions.

Our findings draw attention to the interpersonal communication function of a relatively unexplored dimension of emotions-the level of social engagement versus disengagement. In four experiments, regardless of valence and target group gender, observers infer greater relational well-being (more cohesiveness and less conflict) between group members from socially engaging (sadness and appreciation) versus disengaging (anger and pride) emotion expressions. Supporting our argument that social (dis)engagement is a critical dimension communicated by these emotions, we demonstrate (1) that inferences about group members' self-interest mediate the effect of socially engaging emotions on cohesiveness and (2) that the influence of socially disengaging emotion expressions on inferences of conflict is attenuated when groups have collectivistic norms (i.e., members value a high level of social engagement). Furthermore, we show an important downstream consequence of these inferences of relational well-being: Groups that seem less cohesive because of their members' proud (versus appreciative) expressions are also expected to have worse task performance.