Ambivalent Theory Research Articles

Intergenerational Ambivalence: Aging Mothers Whose Adult Daughters Are Mentally III

Research on families dealing with mental illness has considered either positive or negative aspects of intergenerational family relationships. The current study extends this work by using intergenerational ambivalence theory to examine aging mothers' contradictory expectations toward adult daughters who are mentally ill. This study focuses on interviews obtained from a sample of 22 mothers aged 52-90 who expressed considerable sociological ambivalence in relation to their grown daughters. Four strategies of managing ambivalence are identified: excusing behaviors, reducing expectations, adjusting help-giving, and confronting. The implications are that practitioners should be aware of intergenerational ambivalence, help aging parents identify their ambivalence management strategies, and assess the extent to which these strategies are adaptive. Future research directions in this area are also discussed.

Intergenerational Ambivalence, Power, and Perceptions of Elder Suicide in Rural Japan

This article explores perceptions of elder suicide by older Japanese and contextualizes these perceptions within the theoretical framework of intergenerational ambivalence theory. The examples discussed show how people can use perceptions related to intergenerational relationships and changing social structures and values to create explanatory models for suicidal behavior. In the cases discussed here, high elder suicide rates are seen as a product of conflicting family values and conflicting expectations about how power should be allocated within families. Suicide is one means by which actors negotiate contradictions in the surrounding social environment, contradictions that for many Japanese appear to be consistently evident in the context of multigenerational families where communication and interaction between younger and older generations is perceived as being difficult.

Adult Children's Problems and Successes: Implications for Intergenerational Ambivalence

Ambivalence theory suggests that parents experience ambivalence due to conflicting desires to help children in need and to launch children into adulthood. This study examined parents' reports of their adult children's problems and successes and implications for ambivalence. Participants aged 40-60 years (302 men and 331 women from different families) reported on up to 3 of their adult children (N = 1,251). Men and women differentiated among children in ratings of problems, successes, and ambivalence. Men and not women reported greater ambivalence regarding children with more physical-emotional problems and less career success. Men and women reported greater ambivalence regarding children with less relationship success. Consistent with ambivalence theory, individuals feel more ambivalent regarding problematic and less successful children but men's ambivalence appears to be more sensitive to their children's problems and successes than women's ambivalence.

MATERNAL AMBIVALENCE IN FEMALE PSYCHOTHERAPY RELATIONSHIPS

As social workers often provide various types of clinical interventions to marginalized, distraught mothers, an understanding of how gender issues influence these female clinical relationships is required. This paper draws on one case study from within a larger research project in which the intra‐psychic and inter‐relational impact of maternal ambivalence in clinical exchanges between the female psychotherapist and five, low‐income single mothers was examined over a two year period. The case study presented here highlights the generational, relational, and psychic impact of manageable and unmanageable feelings of maternal ambivalence. A feminist psychoanalytic interpretation of maternal ambivalence and relational theory provided the theoretical framework. The relevance of the findings for social work practice is discussed.

An Application of Affective-Cognitive Ambivalence Theory in Environmental Risk Attitude: The Case Study of Marion County, Ohio in the U.S.

Using data from 132 telephone interviewees, we examined the role of affective-cognitive ambivalence in forming overall attitude and behavior toward toxic chemical and radioactive waste issues in Marion, Ohio in the U.S. In order to compare attitudinal preference, participants were divided into four A-C groups: action-group (Affective+/Cognitive+), detached-group (A-/C+), concerned-group (A+/C-), and inaction-group (A-/C-). Affective and cognitive components interacted, producing redundant influences on overall attitudes and judgments as frequently observed and postulated in previous attitude studies. The results showed that the action-group who were feeling unsafe and believed that environmental accidents had happened or are happening in Marion were less willing to move to the area than other three groups who were feeling safe and/or doubted reports of contamination and its relation with leukemia. Affective and cognitive components were found to have redundant influences on overall attitude. It was also observed that affective-cognitive ambivalence theory has a great potential for explaining the mechanism by which people form attitudes, especially when people have moderate or positive feelings (e.g. sympathy or eagerness for resources) toward the objects and/or when uncertainty is a major feature of environmental issue under consideration (e.g. global climate change).

The Stranger and Social Theory

The literature on ‘the stranger’ usually recognizes Simmel’s authority in formulating a sociology of strangerhood. Occasionally this literature provides a reformulation of the stranger through specific types of actors. For example, the Simmelian stranger has been the basis for Park’s ‘marginal man’ (1928), Wood’s (1934) and Schutz’s (1944) ‘the newcomer’, Siu’s ‘the sojourner’ (1952) and Stonequist’s notion of ‘the cosmopolitan individual’ or ‘the international mind’ (1937).1 Recent revisionist literature draws on, but moves beyond, the Simmelian stranger and its presuppositions. The category of the stranger has thus experienced a renaissance in contemporary social theory (Dessewffy, 1996; Harman, 1988; Stichweh, 1997; Tabboni, 1995). In particular, Zygmunt Bauman has been at the forefront in developing a social theory of strangerhood and his recent publications have contributed further to this intellectual project. In Work, Consumerism and the New Poor (1998a) and Globalization: The Human Consequences (1998b) Bauman is concerned with the constitution and treatment of the social and cultural Other in the west, especially those who have been excluded from an increasingly globalized and mass consumer society. Bulent Diken, in Strangers, Ambivalence and Social Theory (1998), draws on Bauman’s theory of strangerhood and its relationship to modernity and formulates an ‘ambivalent social theory’. In devising such an ambivalent social theory, Diken utilizes ethnographic data on Turkish immigrants in Denmark to reveal the exclusionary and oppressive practices latent in the public discourse of immigration. In their explication of the phenomenon of strangeness, Bauman and Diken highlight some of the recurrent themes in contemporary social theory: identity politics;

Contemporary Forms of Prejudice-Related Conflict: In Search of a Nutshell

Racial ambivalence theory, modern racism theory, and research on prejudice-related discrepancies all suggest that many Whites have conflicting reactions to Blacks. The present research investigated whether these forms of prejudice-related conflict are distinct by determining (a) the extent of association among measures of each form of conflict and (b) the affective reactions associated with each form of conflict. Results revealed virtually no evidence of overlap among the measures of conflict, and scores on measures of each form of conflict were associated with unique patterns of affective reactions. Racial ambivalence was uniquely associated with heightened guilt and discomfort, prejudice-related discrepancies were uniquely associated with heightened guilt and reduced positive affect, and modern racism had no unique affective consequences. Theoretical and applied implications of the existence of numerous contemporary forms of prejudice-related conflict are discussed.

1944-1949 : Repressie zonder maat of einde ? : Een interimverslag over een onderzoek naar de berechting in België van collaborateurs

The purge of Second World War collaborators in Belgium has not been the subject of many serious scientific research sofar. However, progress in theorizing and in data handling make it now possible to clear away the major impediments to such scientific research.After the war, extracts of the judgements of the military courts, which were responsible for the trial of collaborators, were published in the government gazette, « Het Belgisch Staatsblad ». These extracts provide the empirical basis of the project, which is put in the theoretical context known as « the ambivalence theory ». A brief look at the military judiciary system sheds some light on the processes behind the judging of collaborators. The article unveils some first results of the analysis of 5,000 court cases. The most important finding sofar is the absence of consistency - in time as well as in space - in the judging of collaborators in Belgium.

Thanatological Theory and My Dying Father

This introspective, first-person account describes those thanatologically-oriented theories or conceptions which were useful to the son/thanatologist in helping his father toward an appropriate death. Those theories that were particularly useful were a variation of stress theory developed by the author, symbolic interaction theory, psychological and social ambivalence theory, the concept of awareness of finitude, and the regressive intervention concept. The concept of “appropriate death” provided a path and goal that were quite utilitarian. Discussion centered around the need to understand individual differences allowing the dying individual to choose that which is appropriate for him or her throughout the dying process. Second, although it is fashionable to suggest the need for research which would allow greater specificity of prediction and deeper understanding, it is suggested that one learns and grows in dealing with the unpredicted. Evaluative data indicated that a large death education class taught by the instructor found that the day-by-day account of the dying process was valuable in terms of “forever remembering the death education course and the lessons learned in the autobiographical account” and that “the experience made the professor more human in the eyes of the students.” Finally, differences in working with the dying parent as compared to other clients were briefly discussed in terms of the quality and quantity of the human bond.

The convergence of economic systems and the M-form

This paper draws together two areas of economic theory: Williamson's transactional analysis of the capitalist corporation, and the role of technology in comparative economic systems. It considers the M-form as an organizational innovation under capitalism, central planning and self-management, and comes to the conclusion that this new technology does not seem to have promoted the convergence of economic systems. Rather, the M-form's experience suggests that new technology has an impact consistent with Ambivalence theory, which sees new technologies as being adapted to suit the status quo.

Harm‐doing and victim's racial or orthopedic stigma as determinants of helping behavior1

Three experiments tested a prediction derived from an ambivalence theory of behavior toward the stigmatized. The prediction was that unintentional harm-doers would be more likely to make restitution by doing a favor for a stigmatized victim than for a nonstigmatized one. In Experiment 1 it was upheld for black versus white victims. In Experiment 2, where the victim of harm-doing was either physically handicapped or normal, the prediction was upheld only among older subjects, following the post hoc introduction of an age variable. Experiment 3 also used a physical disability variable. The data were consistent with the prediction, although the adequacy of the harm-doing manipulation was not checked empirically. On the whole, these results are seen as complementing previous findings of amplified post-harm-doing denigration of black and disabled victims. An assumption that the relationship between harm-doing and altruism was mediated by guilt arousal received only fragmentary support. That is, self-reports of guilt were highest in the harm-doing black confederate condition in Experiment 1, and self-reports of negative affect were highest in the harm-doing/wheelchair confederate condition in Experiment 3, but there were no significant relationships between individual differences in guilt or negative affect on the one hand, and amount of helping, on the other.

Image of the American Presidency--Part II of An Exploration into Popular Views of Presidential Power

THE NATURE OF POLITICAL leadership in the United States has become a subject of increased interest for political scientists and political sociologists. Crucial though their studies have been to our understanding of American governmental system and of American politics, most of them have told us little about the nature of the presidential image among those people on whose behalf presidential leadership is exerted, namely the public. The concurrent persistence of two themes in popular discussion, the dislike of authority and power, and the contradictory admiration for dynamic leadership suggests that Americans are highly ambivalent regarding power. They admire power and yet they fear it' Our study was designed on the basis of this ambivalence theory. Following from it we developed three hypotheses which we tested in a public opinion survey administered in Detroit, Michigan.2 Our first hypothesis was: Voters want strong presidents who know how to lead and how to make their will prevail. They want them to be far more than chief executives.3 They want them to be people with programs and ideas of their own, with the power to carry them out. In case of conflict between president and Congress or president, and public opinion, they want to see the president's 'will prevail. The second hypothesis takes account of apparent contradictions in our political tradition. Because Americans are afraid of political power * This paper was delivered, in abbreviated form, at the American Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in Washington, D. C., in 1963. 1 Wm. C. Mitchell, Ambivalent Social Status of the American Politician,