Among those closest to you, it is easy to identify two groups of people: true friends, who brighten up your workdays, and sworn enemies – those people who deliberately make your life difficult for no reason.
What about the people in the middle?
These colleagues may offer a friendly shoulder to vent their anguish, but then they spread it behind our backs.
Or they defend us against criticism but take full credit for a joint project, eliminating their contributions without even looking back.
They help and harm alike. They are both friends and enemies, or “ambivalent relationships.”
In the past, occupational psychologists used to take a black and white view of our relationships with colleagues, ignoring the many gray areas of our social relationships.
But recent research shows that those who are our friends and enemies at the same time matter as much or more than people at the extreme ends of the spectrum — and have their own consequences for our health, well-being and behavior at work.
By understanding its complexities, we can all learn to approach employment politics more wisely — and perhaps reduce the stress caused by these people.
The good, the bad and the ugly
There is no doubt that true friends have enormous benefits for health and well-being in general.
There is a wealth of scientific literature available demonstrating that our social connections can boost self-esteem and help us recover from stress more quickly.
They reduce not only the risk of mental illness, but also of physical illness and even death.
So it’s not surprising that the totally negative relationships in our lives have the opposite effect: research shows that psychologically abusive colleagues or family members can do enormous damage to our overall health.
It’s only in the last decade that scientists have begun to examine the people in this middle block – the ambivalent relationships, which can have both good and bad sides – and their effects on our lives.
To that end, they developed simple questionnaires that ask participants to rate how helpful or disruptive their friends are, on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 6 (not at all).
Depending on the answers to each question, researchers can determine whether the relationship is supportive, aversion, or ambivalent.
According to Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Brigham Young University, in the United States, a supportive friend would score 2 or more on the positive trait and 1 on the negative, while the friend with unwanted behavior would have the opposite.
The ambivalent relationship –friend and enemy at the same time– would score at least 2 in both assessments.
Using these categories, researchers like Holt-Lunstad have been able to identify how our reactions to ambivalent relationships are different from other types of relationships.
Some might imagine that the effects of ambivalent friendship fall between supportive and aversion relationships: the good and the bad simply cancel each other out, so the overall impact is neutral. But that’s not what happens.
In several experiments over the past ten years, Holt-Lunstad has shown that interactions with friends who are also enemies at the same time can increase our stress, compared to supportive and aversion relationships.
And, in the long run, this type of relationship seems to harm cardiovascular health.
The problem lies in the typical uncertainty of their reactions. We may crave your approval or support, but we know it may not come – and so we are in constant tension.
And if they react badly, their offensive behavior, or their simple lack of interest, will hurt us far more than the behavior of someone we just don’t like.
Holt-Lunstad estimates that the average person has the same amount of friends and ambivalent relationships. But despite this research, many sociologists and psychologists continue to ignore this question.
“While there is greater recognition of the importance of quality in relationships, there is still a perception that the issue is just negativity versus positivity,” says Holt-Lunstad, who recently published an article outlining her findings.
“It is still underestimated how relationships with positive and negative aspects can influence our health and well-being.”
Ambivalent relationships at work
If love-hate relationships in general have been little studied, their role at work is even less understood.
This is a shame, as many work environments can be quite appropriate for the emergence and maintenance of ambivalent relationships.
“Organizations often lead us to interactions with people we wouldn’t choose to socialize with,” says Shimul Melwani, professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the United States.
In some cases, the sense of professional competition injects negativity into the working relationship. You might find your coworker very pleasant, for example, and be happy to go out drinking with him—but feel betrayed when he applies for the same promotion as you.
“It’s normal for people to want to get ahead, but also get along with their peers at the same time,” says Naomi Rothman, a professor of management at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, US.
Melwani and Rothman recently conducted a series of studies to examine this dynamic, and their results were published in September 2021.
In one experiment, they asked participants to enter a “Quick Friends Program,” which involves answering a series of personal questions for a complete stranger, such as listing their most important achievements.
Previous research has shown that this procedure can quickly establish feelings of emotional connection.
But after a few minutes, Melwani and Rothman spiced things up. A third of the participants continued to participate in a purely positive way – describing what they liked about each other – but another third needed to say what they didn’t like about the other person, introducing some overt negativity.
The others, on the other hand, were given a more ambiguous task: evaluating the achievements of the other and comparing them with their own, which creates a sense of competition.
After these initial conversations, participants were asked to write a blog post about their institution, which was edited by the partner.
And they then had the opportunity to provide a written account of their partner’s performance—directly to the person and privately to the researchers.
As expected, the initial conversations shaped the nature of the quickly formed relationships.
Questions that encouraged positive or negative conversations created supportive or aversion relationships, while competitive interactions generated ambivalent feelings between partners.
This affected the participants’ behavior in interesting ways.
Those who were friends and enemies at the same time put more effort into editing the partners’ report than the aversion and even support groups, for example.
“They really went above and beyond what was asked,” according to Melwani.
And they were even more likely to give negative feedback to researchers, essentially damaging their partner’s reputation in the eyes of scientists.
It’s easy to understand why the dislike partners put less effort into editing their colleague’s work — they just didn’t care — while the friends and foes at the same time at least established some sense of goodwill.
But the fact that ambivalent partners also tried harder than purely supportive partners is surprising. Shouldn’t the newly formed quick friends have been more cooperative?
Melwani suspects that a greater willingness to help can make ambivalent partners release the tensions inherent in this type of relationship — the desire to remain cordial despite irritation and annoyance.
“They don’t want this relationship to become totally negative,” she says. Therefore, they compensate for their bad feelings with more effort to improve their partner’s work.
The next study by Melwani and Rothman asked US retail industry employees about their peers.
They concluded that the nature of ambivalent relationships depends on people’s longings for closeness.
The more people wanted to connect with their ambivalent partner, the more likely they were to both help and harm their partner at work.
In other words, positive intentions mean that all elements of the relationship, good and bad, are more intense. “This makes the ambivalence more marked,” explains Melwani.
tidying up the clutter
Melwani points out that managers can take these conclusions into account and seek, for example, measures to reduce the feeling of competition among colleagues, which can be one of the causes of ambivalence, and ensure that relationships remain more supportive.
For employees, Melwani hopes that a greater understanding of these dynamics can help us deal with our most difficult colleagues.
She claims that our memory is very short, which means that our feelings for ambivalent colleagues at work can easily be influenced by their most recent actions, without necessarily recognizing that ambivalence is an enduring pattern and one of the main characteristics of the relationship.
By understanding this, we can determine whether the benefits outweigh the potential for annoyance and whether perhaps we are in dire need of their respect or affection.
It must be remembered that Melwani’s research demonstrates that the desire for closeness amplifies ambivalent feelings.
So if you start to feel too stressed about the relationship, maybe you can try to be a little more realistic in your expectations of what your ambivalent partner can offer, without necessarily cutting them out of your life altogether.
Sometimes we have to accept that someone will never be a close friend, but that it’s worth keeping the bond with that person – at a distance.
David Robson is a writer. His upcoming book, The Expectation Effect: How Your Thinking Can Transform Your Life, was published in the UK on January 6, 2022. His Twitter account is @d_a_robson.
Read the entirety of this report on the BBC Worklife website.
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I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
