A Messaging Guide for Progressive Organizers
We (the Ambivalence Project team and Goodwin Simon Strategic Research) developed this guide to help organizers, activists, and policy practitioners better understand ambivalence—a state of mixed feelings—and how engaging with people’s ambivalence can provide meaningful opportunities to advance progressive social change.
While some forms of organizing and advocacy focus on asking people to resolve their internal conflict or ambivalence to support an issue or become part of a movement, we are offering an alternative approach. Research shows we can help catalyze powerful shifts within people that enable them to support our issues without requiring them to fully resolve their internal conflict. How? By equipping them to recognize and engage with their ambivalence, to hold it, and to ultimately put more emphasis on the things that allow them to become more supportive, even as conflicting feelings remain.
Interested in Learning More? Click to Download the Guide.