Drawing upon ambivalent attitude literature, this study explored attitudes toward advertising in Taiwan. This study proposes that people generally hold ambivalent attitudes toward advertising, and their affective evaluation and cognitive evaluation conflict. In particular, people may perceive advertisements as simultaneously irritating (the affective component) and informative (the cognitive component). Data from the Taiwan Survey Database, based on nationwide face-to-face interviews with Taiwanese people, support this proposition. Moreover, people who hold more ambivalent attitudes tend to avoid advertisements to a greater degree and approach advertisements to a lesser degree. Finally, this study proposes that the avoidance and approach orientation of behavior moderates affect primacy effects. In other words, affect primacy effects emerge only when the probed behaviors are avoidance oriented.
