ambivalence

1. the simultaneous existence of contradictory feelings and attitudes, such as pleasantness and unpleasantness or friendliness and hostility, toward the same person, object, event, or situation. Eugen Bleuler, who first defined ambivalence in a psychological sense and referred to it as affective ambivalence, regarded extreme ambivalence, such as an individual expressing great love for his or her mother while also asking how to kill her, as a major symptom of schizophrenia.

2. uncertainty or indecisiveness about a course of action. —ambivalent adj.

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Psychology term of the day

November 18th 2024

skewness

n. the degree to which a set of scores, measurements, or other numbers are asymmetrically distributed around a central point. A normal frequency distribution of data is shaped like a bell, with equal values for each of its three indices of central tendency—the mean, the median, and the mode. Approximately 68% of the scores lie within 1 standard deviation of the mean and approximately 95% of the scores lie within 2 standard deviations of the mean. When a distribution has a few extreme scores toward the high end relative to the low end (e.g., when a test is difficult and few test takers do well), it has a positive skew (or is positively skewed), such that the mean is greater than the mode. When a distribution has a few extreme scores toward the low end relative to the high end (e.g., when a test is easy and most test takers do well), it has a negative skew (or is negatively skewed).