Navigating the Maze of Human Conflicts: A Behavioral Perspective

Every day, you face decisions – some trivial, some life-changing. You want a new job but dread leaving your comfort zone. You’re torn between two great options. You feel stuck between two unpleasant ones. These aren’t just everyday dilemmas; they are, in the language of behavioral psychology, conflicts. American psychologists John Dollard and Neal Miller offered one of the most systematic and scientifically grounded explanations for why we feel this internal tug-of-war – and what happens to our behavior as a result. Working within the stimulus-response (S-R) paradigm, they defined conflict not as some invisible inner war between abstract psychic forces, but as something concrete and behavioral: the simultaneous activation of incompatible response tendencies triggered by real-world cues.

What is conflict in the S-R paradigm?
Approach-approach conflict
Avoidance-avoidance conflict
Approach-avoidance conflict
The classic example
Vacillation as a behavioral outcome
Double approach-avoidance conflict
Why it becomes particularly difficult
Conflict, neurosis, and the S-R framework

What is conflict in the S-R paradigm?

Before Dollard and Miller, Freud had already drawn attention to the role of conflict in psychological suffering. But Freud framed conflict as a clash between the id, ego, and superego – internal structures that couldn’t be directly observed or tested. Dollard and Miller reframed this entirely: conflict, for them, arises when we must choose between opposing options – approach a rewarding stimulus, avoid a punishing one, or navigate situations that are simultaneously both. The result is contradictory behavioral tendencies that compete for expression.

Central to their model is the concept of motivational gradients. The closer an organism gets to a goal, the stronger the motivation becomes – a phenomenon called the “goal looms larger” effect. Crucially, the gradient of avoidance is steeper than the gradient of approach. This means that the closer you get to something you fear or dread, the more intensely you want to flee – and this escalation happens faster than the increase in desire when approaching something rewarding. This single asymmetry explains a great deal about human indecision, anxiety, and behavioral paralysis.

Dollard and Miller identified four types of conflict that arise from these competing tendencies. Each produces distinct behavioral outcomes, and each can range from mildly inconvenient to profoundly destabilizing.

Approach-approach conflict

This is the simplest and least distressing form of conflict. An approach-approach conflict occurs when a person must choose between two desirable goals – both are positive, but selecting one means forgoing the other. Think of being accepted into two equally prestigious universities, or having to choose between two job offers that both excite you.

Because both goals carry positive valence, this type of conflict is relatively easy to resolve. Once you move slightly closer to one option – perhaps by imagining it more vividly or gathering more information – the approach tendency toward that option strengthens, tipping the scales. Moving toward either option tends to tip the balance of choice in that direction. There may be some momentary anxiety at the point of decision, but it is rarely disabling. People who regularly face approach-approach conflicts often have a history of positive outcomes, making them confident that either choice will ultimately be rewarding.

Avoidance-avoidance conflict

This type is considerably more uncomfortable. An avoidance-avoidance conflict arises when an individual must choose between two undesirable alternatives – essentially a “lesser of two evils” situation. Neither option is appealing, yet avoiding both is not possible.

A student who has to choose between writing a difficult exam or facing academic failure, or a person who must either have a painful medical procedure or risk their health, is caught in an avoidance-avoidance conflict. Since both options trigger avoidance tendencies, the person is simultaneously driven away from both – but because inaction is often not an option, this creates significant distress. A profound real-life example is Sophie’s Choice – forced to give up one child to save the other – a conflict so unbearable that the character never psychologically recovered. In less extreme versions, people may vacillate, procrastinate, or attempt to mentally “leave the field” altogether.

The behavioral outcome here is often paralysis or desperate attempts to escape the situation entirely. Since both directions carry punishment, neither can be approached comfortably, leading to prolonged indecision and heightened emotional distress.

Approach-avoidance conflict

This is arguably the most psychologically rich – and most commonly studied – of the four types. An approach-avoidance conflict occurs when the same single goal carries both rewarding and aversive qualities – you are drawn toward it and simultaneously repelled by it.

This is where the steepness of the avoidance gradient becomes especially important. From a distance, the positive aspects of the goal dominate. You feel excited, motivated, ready to pursue. But as you get closer, the negative aspects loom larger and larger – faster than the approach motivation grows. At a certain point, the avoidance gradient crosses over the approach gradient, and the person may suddenly pull back.

The classic example

Consider someone who is engaged to be married. People who were happy with an impending marriage might suddenly experience overwhelming doubt or anxiety in the days just before the wedding – precisely because the avoidance gradient spikes sharply as the event draws near. The anxiety is most disabling at the crossover point of the two gradients. Another example: a child with an abusive parent may be simultaneously driven toward that parent for comfort and away from them out of fear. As the child approaches, anxiety rises; as the child retreats, the need for comfort drives approach again. The result is a painful oscillation with no resolution.

Vacillation as a behavioral outcome

The most common behavioral manifestation of unresolved approach-avoidance conflict is vacillation – repeatedly moving toward and then away from the goal. This oscillation occurs because the individual repeatedly crosses the equilibrium point where approach and avoidance forces temporarily balance, and the closer they get to the goal, the more intense this oscillation becomes. This dynamic is well-supported by experimental research showing that when the competing motivational forces are more equally matched, people take longer to decide and their behavioral trajectories become more complex and erratic.

Dollard and Miller had clear implications for therapy here. If a therapist tries to push the patient toward their feared goal, it will only amplify the patient’s fear and conflict, possibly driving them away from therapy. The right strategy, they argued, is to first reduce the avoidance gradient – to lower the fear itself – so that the person can naturally move forward past the conflict point.

Double approach-avoidance conflict

Real life is rarely as neat as a single goal with a single valence. Most meaningful decisions involve comparing two or more options that each carry both positives and negatives. This is the essence of the double approach-avoidance conflict. In a double approach-avoidance conflict, both choice alternatives contain positive and negative aspects – for example, choosing between two cities to relocate to, where each has appealing qualities and drawbacks.

This type corresponds most closely to real-life situations, where many positive and negative factors must all be weighed before a decision can be made. A person might be considering two job offers: one pays more but requires long hours and relocation; the other offers flexibility but less prestige and lower pay. Neither is purely desirable or purely aversive.

Why it becomes particularly difficult

The challenge with double approach-avoidance conflicts is that committing to one choice activates its own avoidance gradient, while the thought persists that the unchosen option might have been better. The grass always seems greener. Moving closer to one option highlights its negatives, which triggers renewed interest in the alternative – whose negatives then become more salient in turn. This cycle can produce rumination, regret, and profound decisional anxiety.

In extreme cases, a severe double approach-avoidance conflict can generate a feeling of being completely trapped, unable to escape the situation. When the conflict is insoluble and unavoidable, the psychological pressure can, in the most serious cases, lead to a break from reality orientation itself.

Conflict, neurosis, and the S-R framework

For Dollard and Miller, conflict was not merely an inconvenience – it was the root of psychological suffering. In their landmark 1950 work Personality and Psychotherapy, they argued that the misery characteristic of neurosis is a direct result of unresolved conflict. Conflict produces intense drives – fear, anxiety, suppressed desires – that the person cannot consciously address because the conflict has been repressed. The neurotic symptoms that emerge, whether phobias, compulsions, or psychosomatic complaints, are learned behaviors that temporarily reduce this drive-produced distress.

What made Dollard and Miller’s contribution so significant was the precision of their framework. By translating psychoanalytic insight into the testable language of stimulus-response learning, they made it possible to study human conflict empirically and address it therapeutically through concrete behavioral change. The four conflict types – approach-approach, avoidance-avoidance, approach-avoidance, and double approach-avoidance – give us a map for understanding why decisions feel easy sometimes, agonizing at others, and outright paralyzing when both desire and dread pull at us simultaneously.

Understanding which type of conflict you are experiencing is itself a powerful first step. It tells you something important: whether you need to gather more information to tip one option ahead, whether you need to lower your fear before you can move forward, or whether you are navigating the genuinely complex terrain of competing real-world trade-offs.

What do you think? Can you identify a recent decision in your own life that fits one of these four conflict types – and did knowing the type help clarify why it felt so difficult? If the avoidance gradient is steeper than the approach gradient, what does that suggest about how we should design the environments and choices we offer to others – in parenting, education, or the workplace?

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References

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Table of Contents

What is conflict in the S-R paradigm? 🔗

Approach-approach conflict 🔗

Avoidance-avoidance conflict 🔗

Approach-avoidance conflict 🔗

The classic example 🔗

Vacillation as a behavioral outcome 🔗

Double approach-avoidance conflict 🔗

Why it becomes particularly difficult 🔗

Conflict, neurosis, and the S-R framework 🔗