Approach-Avoidance Elicitation Protocol¶
Elicitation protocol — instantiates Goal Valence Decomposition and Separation
Pulls a mixed goal's approach and avoidance drivers apart at the source, through separate lines of questioning, before either side is judged or averaged.
Every other move in this archetype needs raw material, and this is the mechanism that produces it. The Approach-Avoidance Elicitation Protocol is a disciplined way of asking that draws the pull-toward and the push-away out of an actor in separate passes, so the two are recorded as independent lists rather than dissolved into a single "how do you feel about it." Its defining idea is that the separation happens at the moment of elicitation — in the questioning itself — not later on a whiteboard. The protocol never asks the fused, averaging question ("so, on balance, are you in?"); it asks about attraction until it is exhausted, then asks about aversion until it is exhausted, and hands off two maps that have never been allowed to touch. It supplies content only: it does not judge whether a concern is valid, and it does not decide anything.
Example¶
A diabetes nurse sits with a patient who has been "thinking about" starting insulin for the better part of a year — a textbook mixed goal. Rather than open with "are you ready yet?", she runs two deliberate passes. First, approach only: what would actually be better if your numbers came down? The patient names energy to keep up with his grandkids, fewer 2 a.m. lows, fewer clinic visits. She writes these in one column and keeps going — and what else? — until the pull is fully out. Only then does she switch: what makes you hesitate? Now come the needles, the cost, and, quietly, "insulin means I finally lost." She writes these in a separate column and, crucially, never lets him collapse it into "I guess I'm sixty-forty."
The outcome is a two-sided map, not a verdict: a strong approach side anchored on the grandkids, and an avoidance side that turns out to be mostly two reducible items (needle fear, cost) plus one identity item that no amount of barrier-removal will touch. Every downstream mechanism — classification, conversion, messaging, the final decision — reads off this map. Without the separate-pass discipline, all of that structure would have been flattened into one shrug.
How it works¶
- Two passes, never one. Elicit the approach drivers to exhaustion first, then the avoidance drivers to exhaustion — as distinct segments with a clean break between them.
- Ladder each side. Use open prompts and repeated "and what else?" to surface tacit drivers, especially the ones the actor hasn't articulated even to themselves.
- Capture verbatim, don't net. Record each driver in the actor's own words; refuse any single balance question that would average the two columns.
- Hand off two maps. The output is an approach list and an avoidance list and a narrowly defined goal — nothing scored, nothing ranked, nothing yet judged.
Tuning parameters¶
- Laddering depth — a two-minute pass versus exhaustive probing. Deeper elicitation surfaces buried drivers but costs time and can fatigue the respondent.
- Pass order — approach-first builds safety and rapport; avoidance-first can surface the real block before enthusiasm papers over it. Order changes what comes out.
- Channel — face-to-face captures nuance; an anonymous survey surfaces stigmatized avoidance drivers (shame, distrust) that no one says aloud to an authority.
- Source — self-report versus proxy or observed behavior; self-report misses drivers people won't admit, so triangulate when the stakes are high.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is that it drags the real "but" into the open — the tacit, half-formed avoidance drivers that a single satisfaction question never captures — and it does so before anyone has decided the answer, which is exactly when the map is still honest. It is the input the whole archetype depends on.
Its failure mode is that asking is not neutral. Probing barriers can make them more salient and can even manufacture reactance where little existed, and leading prompts quietly seed the answer; the protocol shares this with any structured interview, sharpened here because it is deliberately hunting for aversion. Self-report also misses drivers the actor will not voice. The classic misuse is treating the elicited list as fact rather than as the actor's current framing — a decisional-balance snapshot, not ground truth.[n1] The guarding discipline is neutral open prompts, anonymity for stigmatized items, and holding the two maps as hypotheses to be tested, not conclusions.
How it implements the components¶
This mechanism fills only the raw-material end of the archetype's machinery:
target_goal_unit— the protocol opens by pinning the goal narrowly enough that its valence can be assessed ("starting insulin now," not "managing diabetes").approach_driver_map— the first pass produces it: the exhaustive list of reasons the target pulls.avoidance_driver_map— the second pass produces it: the exhaustive list of reasons the target pushes away.
It does NOT enforce the persistent display boundary that keeps the maps from being re-averaged downstream, nor does it split them by stakeholder — that is Benefit-Barrier Split Matrix (valence_separation_boundary, stakeholder_specific_valence_profiles), its nearest twin; and it does not judge whether any avoidance driver is legitimate — that is Concern Validity Review (avoidance_legitimacy_filter).
Related¶
- Instantiates: Goal Valence Decomposition and Separation — this protocol produces the two driver maps every other mechanism reads from.
- Sibling mechanisms: Benefit-Barrier Split Matrix · Paired Message Frame · Barrier-to-Support Conversion · Staged Commitment Ladder · Dual-Valence Metric Dashboard · Concern Validity Review · Recomposition Commitment Review
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Communication, Facilitation & Learning
Rationale: Pulls a mixed goal's approach and avoidance drivers apart at the source, through separate lines of questioning, before either side is judged or averaged, making its operative form a designed exchange or learning exposure that changes understanding or capability.
Independent corroboration: The frozen evidence defines Approach-Avoidance Elicitation Protocol as 'Pulls a mixed goal's approach and avoidance drivers apart at the source, through separate lines of questioning, before either side is judged or averaged', so its operative form is Communication, Facilitation & Learning.
Review outcome: Independent reviewer agreement; medium confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: Psychology
Origin pattern: Single lineage
Present-day reach: Universal
Rationale: Psychological approach-avoidance conflict, decisional balance, and motivational interviewing establish separate elicitation of attractions and aversions.
Related originating lineages:
- Behavioral Economics — Valence and asymmetric incentives offer a parallel decision account.
- Cognitive Science — Decision representations formalize competing valences.
- Medicine & Healthcare — Behavior-change counseling provides the principal applied protocol.
Review resolution: Lewinian approach-avoidance conflict and decisional-balance psychology are the direct lineage. Behavioral decision theory, cognitive representation, and motivational interviewing in healthcare materially develop the two-sided elicitation; the established protocol is broadly applicable rather than Encyclopedia-created.
Review outcome: Reconciled after independent review; high confidence.
Notes¶
[n1] Decisional balance — the weighing of pros and cons of a change, a construct from the transtheoretical (stages-of-change) model and a staple of motivational interviewing. The protocol elicits the two sides of that balance but deliberately stops short of tallying them, which is why its output is a map and not a score. ↩