Drawing Inferences:

People differ in how effectively they draw inferences. If a person is, for example, repeatedly confronted with phenomenon A, he may inductively assume or identify a relationship between phenomenon A and phenomenon B. If, in a specific case, they then observe phenomenon A and know about the connection between phenomena A and B, they can use this knowledge to infer deductively the specific nature of phenomenon B, or at least to narrow down what phenomenon B is likely to be like.

Ambivalenzen / Ambivalence:

Wikipedia:

"Ambivalenz (lateinisch ambo „beide“ und valere „gelten“) bezeichnet einen inneren Zustand, der wesentlich geprägt ist von einem inneren Konflikt. Dabei bestehen in einer Person sich widersprechende Wünsche, Gefühle und Gedanken gleichzeitig nebeneinander und führen zu inneren Spannungen.

In der Allgemeinsprache gebräuchlicher ist das Adjektiv ambivalent (zwiespältig, doppelwertig, mehrdeutig, vielfältig, zweideutig). Eugen Bleuler verwendete den Begriff erstmals 1910 während eines Vortrags. Für ihn war Ambivalenz ein Hauptmerkmal der Schizophrenie. Im heutigen Sprachgebrauch, auch im klinischen Bereich, versteht man unter „Ambivalenz“ aber kein Symptom einer Krankheit, sondern das Erleben einer konflikthaften, von gegensätzlichen Aspekten geprägten Bewertung der Situation oder eines Objekts. Dieses Erleben basiert auf der erworbenen Fähigkeit, auf Abwehr durch Spaltung zu verzichten und gegensätzliche Erlebniszustände zu ertragen. Die Fähigkeit, Ambivalenz auszuhalten, spricht für eine gesteigerte emotionale Reife.

Bedeutung

Bei der Ambivalenz handelt es sich um das simultane Bestehen sich eigentlich ausschließender Einstellungen und Handlungstendenzen. Der Begriff „Hassliebe“ ist ein Beispiel für eine solche Verknüpfung gegensätzlicher Wertungen. Auch in der Physiologie sind antagonistische Funktionen bekannt. Die Ambivalenz betrifft psychologische Funktionen.

Dass jedes Ding zwei Seiten haben kann, ist keine Ambivalenz, solange dadurch kein innerer Konflikt hervorgerufen wird. Ambivalenz ist eine Dichotomie von Sichtweisen, die gegensätzliche Reaktionen bedingen und letztlich die Fähigkeit zu einer Entscheidung hemmen können."

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"Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some object. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively and negatively valenced components. The term also refers to situations where "mixed feelings" of a more general sort are experienced, or where a person experiences uncertainty or indecisiveness.

Although attitudes tend to guide attitude-relevant behavior, those held with ambivalence tend to do so to a lesser extent. The less certain an individual is in their attitude, the more impressionable it becomes, hence making future actions less predictable and/or less decisive. Ambivalent attitudes are also more susceptible to transient information (e.g., mood), which can result in a more malleable evaluation. However, since ambivalent people think more about attitude-relevant information, they also tend to be more persuaded by (compelling) attitude-relevant information than less-ambivalent people. Explicit ambivalence may or may not be experienced as psychologically unpleasant when the positive and negative aspects of a subject are both present in a person's mind at the same time.  Psychologically uncomfortable ambivalence, also known as cognitive dissonance, can lead to avoidance, procrastination, or to deliberate attempts to resolve the ambivalence. People experience the greatest discomfort from their ambivalence at the time when the situation requires a decision to be made. People are aware of their ambivalence to varying degrees, so the effects of an ambivalent state vary across individuals and situations. For this reason, researchers have considered two forms of ambivalence, only one of which is subjectively experienced as a state of conflict.

Felt ambivalence

The psychological literature has distinguished between several different forms of ambivalence. One, often called subjective ambivalence or felt ambivalence, represents the psychological experience of conflict (affective manifestation), mixed feelings, mixed reactions (cognitive manifestation), and indecision (behavioral manifestation) in the evaluation of some object.  Ambivalence is not always acknowledged by the individual experiencing it. Although, when the individual becomes aware to a varying degree, discomfort is felt, which is elicited by the conflicting attitudes about a particular stimulus.

Subjective ambivalence is generally assessed using direct self-report measures regarding one's experience of conflict about the topic of interest. Because subjective ambivalence is a secondary judgment of a primary evaluation (i.e., I'm conflicted of my positive attitude towards the president), it is considered to be metacognitive. The point of these measures is to find out how much a person experiences ambivalence in a particular evaluation. Their report may be provided in a number of ways. Priester and Petty,for example, utilized a rating system where they had subjects rate the level of conflict they were experiencing on a scale from 0 (as in the subject experienced "no conflict at all") to 10 (as in the subject experienced "maximum conflict"). However, people do not like to experience the negative emotions associated with ambivalence and therefore may not acknowledge, or report, their level of conflict as accurately as possible. This makes the measure of felt ambivalence a bit less reliable than a researcher may desire."