Emotional conflict
Emotional conflict occurs when a person experiences two (or more) opposing emotions/feelings at the same time, and those opposing feelings are pulling them in different directions.
Carl Jung indicated that "emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious are the classical features of...medical psychology".[1] The child psychoanalyst Eric Erickson indicated that emotional conflict was a source of neurosis in children.[2]
Emotional conflict happens when:
- A person wishes to do something, but another part of the person doesn’t want to do it.
- A person feels both positive and negative emotions about the same person or situation.
- A person has two or more different values, desires, or needs inside themselves that are incompatible.
Emotional conflict can create stress, indecision, hesitation, and/or even physical tension. See also: Stress management
Contents
Emotional conflict and goal conflict
See also: Goal conflict and Goal setting
Goal setting is the process of defining specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives to motivate and guide individuals/groups/organization toward a desired outcome.
Goal conflict "arises when pursuing one goal interferes with the achievement of another, leading to emotional distress and potentially impacting well-being. This conflict can manifest in various forms, such as incompatible strategies for achieving different goals, or scarcity of resources needed for both goals. The experience of goal conflict is often linked to mixed emotions, where individuals experience both positive and negative emotions simultaneously, and can influence how individuals appraise their situations and prioritize their goals."[3]
Journal articles:
- Does Goal Conflict Necessarily Undermine Wellbeing? A Moderated Mediating Effect of Mixed Emotion and Construal Level, Frontiers in Psychology. 2021 Jun 2;12:653512. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.653512
- Goal conflict, ambivalence and psychological distress: Concurrent and longitudinal relationships, Personality and Individual Differences. Volume 129, 15 July 2018, Pages 38-42
Journal articles
- Emotional conflict affects microsaccade dynamics in the emotional face-word Stroop task, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2025 May;1547(1):204-219. doi: 10.1111/nyas.15342. Epub 2025 Apr 2024.
- Differences in Emotional Conflict Processing between High and Low Mindfulness Adolescents: An ERP Study, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2022 Mar 2;19(5):2891. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19052891.
- Conflict control of emotional and non-emotional conflicts in preadolescent children, Biol Psychol. 2019 Sep:146:107708. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.05.008. Epub 2019 May 30.
- Differences in the emotional conflict task between individuals with high and low social adjustment: An ERP study, PLoS One. 2019 Jun 12;14(6):e0217962. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217962. eCollection 2019.
- Development of neural mechanisms in emotional conflict adaptation: A comparison of children, adolescents, and young adults, Neuropsychology. 2019 Feb;33(2):222-233. doi: 10.1037/neu0000519. Epub 2019 Jan 21.
- Positive emotion impedes emotional but not cognitive conflict processing, Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2017 Jun;17(3):665-677. doi: 10.3758/s13415-017-0504-1.
- Emotion and goal-directed behavior: ERP evidence on cognitive and emotional conflict, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2015 Nov;10(11):1577-87. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsv050. Epub 2015 Apr 28.
- Unconsciously triggered emotional conflict by emotional facial expressions, PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e55907. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055907. Epub 2013 Feb 7.
- Emotional conflict in interpersonal interactions, NeuroImage. Volume 54, Issue 2, 15 January 2011, Pages 1685-1691
- Affect, emotional conflict, and deficit: an overview, Psychother Psychosom. 1991;56(3):116-22. doi: 10.1159/000288543.
- Conflict over emotional expression: psychological and physical correlates, J Pers Soc Psychol. 1990 May;58(5):864-77. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.58.5.864.
See also
- Emotional stability
- Neuroticism
- Self-regulation
- Self-awareness
- Mindfulness (Psychology)
- Sociology of emotions
External links
- Emotional reactions leading to conflict, University of Toledo
References
- ↑ C. G. Jung, Man and his Symbols (London 1964) p. 80
- ↑ David L. Sills ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences: Vols 9-10 (1968) p. 158
- ↑ Goals and emotional conflict
