Ambivalence facts for kids

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.

Ambivalence in clinical psychology

Bleuler's tripartite scheme

The concept of ambivalence was introduced into psychiatric parlance by Eugen Bleuler, who used it in print for the first time in his 1910 article Vortrag über Ambivalenz. Bleuler distinguished three main types of ambivalence: volitional, intellectual, and emotional. Volitional ambivalence refers to an inability to decide on an action—what Montaigne called "a spirit justly balanced betweene two equal desires". The concept (if not Bleuler's term) had a long prehistory, reaching back through Buridan's ass, starving between two equally attractive bales of hay in the Middle Ages, to Aristotle. Intellectual ambivalence—the sceptical belief that "There is no reason but hath a contrary to it" —also follows a long tradition reaching back through Montaigne to Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrho. (Freud considered Bleuler's stress on intellectual ambivalence particularly appropriate given his own ambivalence towards Freud's intellectual constructs, alternatively praising and criticizing them). Emotional ambivalence involved opposing affective attitudes towards the same object, as with the man who both loved and hated his wife.

While mainly dealing with ambivalence in relation to the psychological splitting of schizophrenia, Bleuler also noted how "in the dreams of healthy persons, affective as well as intellectual ambivalence is a common phenomenon".

Freudian usage

Freud was swift to pick up Bleuler's concept of ambivalence, applying it to areas he had previously dealt with in terms of ambiguous language, or the persistent co-existence of love and hatred aimed at the same person.

Another relevant distinction is that whereas the psychoanalytic notion of "ambivalence" sees it as engendered by all neurotic conflict, a person's everyday "mixed feelings" may easily be based on a quite realistic assessment of the imperfect nature of the thing being considered.

Ambivalence in philosophy

Philosophers such as Hili Razinsky consider how ambivalence relates to other aspects of the human experience, such as personhood, action, and judgement, and what it means that strict ambivalence is possible.

See also