Approach-Avoidance Conflict

Approach-avoidance conflict is a form of psychological conflict, studied within the field of motivational psychology, that arises when a single goal, object, or situation carries both appealing and aversive qualities at the same time, so that a person feels simultaneously drawn toward it and motivated to avoid or move away from it. The concept was developed within the field theory of motivation proposed by the psychologist Kurt Lewin and was further elaborated experimentally by the psychologist Neal Miller, whose approach-avoidance gradient model proposed that the strength of the tendency to avoid a goal increases more steeply than the strength of the tendency to approach it as a person moves physically or psychologically closer to that goal, a difference in gradients that produces a stable point of hesitation, ambivalence, or back-and-forth oscillation rather than a straightforward resolution firmly toward one behavior or the other. Approach-avoidance conflict is distinguished within this same classic framework from two related conflict types: approach-approach conflict, in which a person must choose between two options that are both desirable, and avoidance-avoidance conflict, in which a person must choose between two options that are both undesirable, with approach-avoidance conflict generally considered the most psychologically stressful and persistent of the three because the single option involved cannot simply be chosen or rejected outright without giving up something of genuine value either way.