I am a social psychologist whose scholarship investigates the cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences of feeling ambivalent and internally conflicted. Although our attitudes and emotions are extremely useful for navigating our social worlds, our opinions and feelings are often not black-and-white or point solely in one direction (i.e., positive or negative), resulting in internal conflict—what is the right thing to do, feel, or believe when we can see more than one side of an issue? To investigate such questions, my interdisciplinary programs of research draws on theory from literatures on attitudes and persuasion, emotion, the self, and cross-cultural psychology to investigate the antecedents of feeling conflicted and how people navigate various ambivalent experiences.
My research focuses on two overarching themes. First, my work uses a discrete, functionalist account of emotion (i.e., treating individual emotions as having unique roles or orienting functions) to better understand different types of internal conflict (e.g., indulging in guilty pleasures, holding strong attitudes). Second, my research examines cross-cultural differences in social cognitive outcomes (e.g., communication processes, attitude formation) that result from experiencing internal conflict.
For more detail on current and upcoming projects, please the see the GPA lab page.
Guilty Pleasures
The main focus of my research currently is based on my dissertation which explored the psychology of indulging in guilty pleasures. Guilty pleasures refer to instances where one experiences negative affect for liking a particular activity or object. To this end, guilty pleasures are a fantastic testbed for understanding how people navigate ambivalent experiences. In my dissertation, I conducted the first systematic investigation of guilty pleasures, building a taxonomy of types of guilty pleasures, understanding the conditions where people indulge in them, and identifying the emotional and psychological consequences of wrestling with these internal inconsistencies. These studies have involved undergraduate and general population samples of over one thousand people.
Togans, L. J. (2024). How should I feel about this? Investigating the emotions and processes involved in indulging in guilty pleasures [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami171767231299081 [PDF]
Attitude Strength
Another form of internal conflict that I study is exploring the antecedents to forming strong attitudes, because holding a strong attitude (e.g., I love my best friend) reflects the lack of internal conflict (i.e., one has resolved any discrepancies, thus producing a durable and impactful attitude). One of my research programs investigates the antecedents of holding strong (vs. weak) attitudes by examining how the emotions people experience shape the strength of their evaluations. To this end, I have explored how opinions predicated on nostalgia are stronger than those that are not, as well as demonstrating that attitudes that we believe reflect our moral values are more stable over time.
Togans, L. J., & McConnell, A. R. (in press). Blinded by wistfulness: On how nostalgia strengthens attitudes. Cognition and Emotion. DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2336196 [PDF]
Luttrell, A., & Togans, L. J. (2021). The stability of moralized attitudes over time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47, 551-564. DOI: 10.1177/0146167220935737 [PDF]
Cross-cultural Psychology
Importantly, the experience of internal conflict varies in meaningful ways as a function of one’s cultural background. Thus, in another program of my research, I have examined how cultural norms or values affect people’s engagement with internal conflict, and how those experiences can be explained via information processing strategies (e.g., dialectical thinking) and views of the self (e.g., self-construal). For instance, I have explored cross-cultural differences in the use of emoji and emoticon when sending text messages, as well as cross-cultural differences in the degree of comfort people have in holding ambivalent opinions.
Togans, L. J., Holtgraves, T., Kwon, G., & Morales Zelaya, T. E. (2021). Digitally saving face: An experimental investigation of cross-cultural differences in the use of emoticons and emoji. Journal of Pragmatics, 186, 277-288. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.09.016 [PDF]
Luttrell, A., Petty, R. E., Chang, J., & Togans, L. J. (2022). The role of dialecticism in objective and subjective attitudinal ambivalence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 61, 826-841. DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12504 [PDF]