Overview
This is choosing between two things you like. Typically, there is not much conflict involved. You like both, either would be fine. We tend to choose whichever is closest or most convenient.
Examples
- Deciding which of your favorite burger joints to visit
- Choosing which chair to sit in at a restaurant
- Deciding which seashell to pick up next
- Choosing which socks to wear tomorrow
- Choosing which charity to give to
- Deciding which gas station to use
- Picking among free cookies
Video Transcript
An approach-approach conflict is not much of a conflict. It’s a choice between two things you like. It’s the choice between apple pie and pecan pie, or is it pe-cawn?
Whichever choice you have, sometimes you say “Well, just give me whichever one is closest.” “Give me the one that is most convenient.”
Or you might say, “Give me both.”
As a conflict, a choice between two things you’d like doesn’t have a lot of internal trouble. There is not a lot of angst that goes with it. Typically the choice between two things you like is pretty easy to resolve.
You probably pick the grocery store, the cleaners you go to, the post office that you go to, all on the basis of whoever happens to be the closest. Some may be the closest in time, not distance. For example you may have a freeway by you and you can get on the freeway and stop and that’s the one you go to. Or maybe that it’s close to work or to some other activity that you do. But once you pick it, it is not necessarily that it’s the best.
It simply has to be the most convenient. Most grocery store is about the same. Most post offices are about the same. Most cleaners are about the same.
So we typically pick it on the basis of whichever one is most convenient for us.
Audio
Infographic
