Neurophysiological Assessment of Ambivalence to Information

Abstract

The proliferation of technologies has made information ubiquitously available to individuals who rely on it to make decisions or conduct transactions. We focus on how and why valence of information may elicit mixed reactions among individuals and potentially influence their decision-making process. Prior research in IS has primarily focused on positive and negative reactions to technology (in most cases separately). We examine the simultaneous presence of positive and negative dispositions—ambivalence. We theorize and show how ambivalence will elicit distinct behavioral responses and evoke attentional processes. We use electroencephalography (EEG) to conduct a within subject repeated measures laboratory experiment to illustrate these effects. Our results highlight that individuals experiencing ambivalence due to valence incongruent information exhibit a higher involvement of attentional processes than individuals who experience other types of information valence, i.e., positivity, negativity, and indifference. Individuals experiencing ambivalence also expressed different levels of behavioral intention to use a product from individuals who experienced positive, negative, and indifferent valence of information.