What's the difference between ambivalent and indifferent?

Ambivalent


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In doing so they are often supported by their parents who as well assume an ambivalent attitude towards therapy.
  • (2) We interpret this exaggerated positive attitude as an attempt to overcome inner fears, doubts and ambivalences.
  • (3) Partners to the drug-treated mice showed a decrease in the occurrence of offensive ambivalence and of the element "rattle".
  • (4) But also the functionalism does not offer a complete psychological theory: there is an ambivalence concerning the secondary qualities and also concerning intentionality.
  • (5) This component of a more comprehensive study of Houdini focuses on the unusual reification of his family romance fantasies, their endurance well beyond the usual boundaries in time, their kinship with mythological themes, and their infusion with the ambivalence that is often addressed toward the true parents.
  • (6) The whole proves his introversion, ambivalence, hypersensitivity, obstinancy, anxieties, behavioral anomalies, a life rich in fantasies and his underestimation of his own literary work.
  • (7) I thought: this is a country of law and they will help me get my rights.” She is so fond of the child she looked after for 18 months that she feels ambivalent about any possible prosecution of the parents, her ex-employers.
  • (8) It was noted that apart from these two factors, these drinking drivers were equally ambivalent in their attitudes toward alcoholism and the alcoholic when compared to the norm group.
  • (9) They were called 'the give-uppers', 'the clenchers', 'the refocusers' and 'the ambivalents'.
  • (10) Of the 133 pregnancies that ended in childbirth, 59.4% of the mothers felt that the refusal had been completely justified, 24.8% were ambivalent, and 15.8% felt that the refusal had been unjustified.
  • (11) Even many faculty members, including the school's president, Sister Mary Tracy, were ambivalent about the need to let go a competent and popular teacher.
  • (12) Responses of avoidant, ambivalent and controlling groups showed elements of the same organization revealed in reunion behaviour.
  • (13) O'Donnell cautions against adopting an absolute rule of always disclosing everything, and acknowledges the difficulties of coping with patient ambivalence on the issue.
  • (14) The opening lines of Hill's first completed (but second to be published) novel, Fell of Dark (1971), were clearly prophetic: "I possess the Englishman's usual ambivalent attitude to the police.
  • (15) They found, in men: an inability to abandon fertility as lost (with denial of sterility); ambivalence, castration anxiety and a feeling of being excluded from the mother-child symbiosis with later acceptance of loss of fertility and (sometimes excessively) identification with the "mother".
  • (16) Results indicated that psychiatric patients (N = 66): a) viewed both parents more negatively than did members of a matched sample of 66 normal subjects; b) expressed significantly greater ambivalence regarding both parents than did normal subjects; and c) described both parents at a more primitive conceptual level than did normal subjects.
  • (17) The method to overcome the resistance to dental attention due to anguish is to establish a good relation-ship between the dentist and the patient, a good management of the ambivalent feeling of the child and the elimination of the phenomenon of transference.
  • (18) When controlled for sex, additional symptom differences were found for female schizophrenics; blacks were more often excited, ambivalent, rigid and dysphoric.
  • (19) Transsexuals who had not undergone surgery, although it had been offered to them providing they fulfilled the usual requirements, were classified into various subgroups, measured according to their attitude towards sex reassignment surgery: they were transsexuals with an unaltered wish for surgery, transsexuals who were ambivalent towards surgery (hesitating patients), and transsexuals who had relinquished their wish for surgery and lived in the initial gender role.
  • (20) These feelings of ambivalence, emotional instability, and sometimes even hostility toward the surgeon make the male aesthetic patient more of a psychological risk than the female aesthetic patient.

Indifferent


Definition:

  • (a.) Not mal/ing a difference; having no influence or preponderating weight; involving no preference, concern, or attention; of no account; without significance or importance.
  • (a.) Neither particularly good, not very bad; of a middle state or quality; passable; mediocre.
  • (a.) Not inclined to one side, party, or choice more than to another; neutral; impartial.
  • (a.) Feeling no interest, anxiety, or care, respecting anything; unconcerned; inattentive; apathetic; heedless; as, to be indifferent to the welfare of one's family.
  • (a.) Free from bias or prejudice; impartial; unbiased; disinterested.
  • (adv.) To a moderate degree; passably; tolerably.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I did not - do not - quite understand how some are able to contemplate his anti-semitism with indifference.
  • (2) Strains showing occasional antagonism at a particular proportion of concentrations of the test combination, were found to only be indifferent when the mean index of the fractional inhibition concentration of all checkerboard combinations was calculated.
  • (3) Whether out of fear, indifference or a sense of impotence, the general population has learned to turn away, like commuters speeding by on the freeways to the suburbs, unseeingly passing over the squalor.
  • (4) "The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties," he said.
  • (5) The report paints a picture characterised too often by international indifference, even over the collection and distribution of the raw data on migrant deaths.
  • (6) Never had I heard anything about what I saw documented so unsparingly in Evan’s photographs: families sleeping in the streets, their clothes in shreds, straw hats torn and unprotecting of the sun, guajiros looking for work on the doorsteps of Havana’s indifferent mansions.
  • (7) We know this system doesn't work – and yet we prop it up with ignorance and indifference.
  • (8) The Tip Deflection Test involved securing the lead at 45 degrees at the indifferent electrode and applying a force to deflect the tip 5 mm.
  • (9) A sine wave current stimulus, applied between electrodes placed about one ear and an indifferent electrode, produced a cyclical sway predominantly in the coronal plane.
  • (10) I watched about 90 shows in three weeks, with an unfavourable ratio of good to bad to indifferent.
  • (11) The ghastliness of this American shock jock, who, though still obscure to most Britons, is said to be the third most popular radio host in the States, perhaps explains why news of his continued exclusion from the UK was greeted last week with utter indifference.
  • (12) In 20 patients a water-soluble contrast medium (Urovison for infusion 30%, 500 ml) was injected after addition of indifferent infusion solutions, or the contrast medium was mixed with the ascitic fluid remaining in the cavity after abdominal puncture of patients with ascites.
  • (13) When the initial-link reinforcement rate was lower than the terminal-link rate, preference converged toward indifference.
  • (14) In this study was tested the prediction that approach-oriented wrestlers should perform better than indifferent- and avoidance-oriented ones.
  • (15) On a macro level, a party that is already thoroughly militarized and corporatized – and largely indifferent to Main Street whenever it poses a conflict with Wall Street – offers little alternative to the other party that already celebrates that.
  • (16) Even if Honda manage to improve their woeful power unit and McLaren make improvements to their indifferent car, it is difficult to see the team running better than mid-table next term.
  • (17) He says it is not for him to say what Russia should do but “it can not be indifferent to the destiny of such a big partner as Ukraine”.
  • (18) What to say to the children who went to a pop concert and left to find their waiting parents blown apart by the hate and callous indifference in the foyer?
  • (19) The best results were observed in hebephrenic forms and depressive syndroms during the illness; in these indications, carpipramine exerts a clear psychomotor stimulating activity which is useful in decreasing indifference, apathy and ideomotor slowness.
  • (20) In general, the combination of quinolone antibiotics with other drugs tested against staphylococci, enterococci, and anaerobic species has shown indifference.