Ambivalence

I got to be a psychology test subject for the first time yesterday. (At least, the first time that I know about.) I volunteered to answer a questionaire about asylum seekers and then press buttons as bits of text flashed up on the screen according to whether they were real words or not. It as quite fun being experimented on. It turned out that the point of it was that, apparently, they used to think that people who are undecided about something want to make up their minds, and feel uncomfortable being ambivalent; but the new theory is that people who are undecided value being undecided, so if you try to make them decide your way, they will resent you trying to make them decide at all and are more likely to move the other way. This suggests that the only kind of preaching that is of any use at all is preaching to the converted. In retrospect, I think I probably played right into their hands and will provide good evidence for their theory...