The ability to feel mixed emotions is a sign of maturity. If people can blend contradictory emotions together. such as happiness with guilt, or anger with love, it shows that they can encompass life's emotional complexity. Experienced together, opposing feelings tame each other. Once peopel develop the ability to feel different emotions at the same time, the world ripens into something richer and deeper. Instead of having a single, intense, one-dimensional emotional reaction, they can experience several different feelings that reflect the nuances of the situation. However, the reactions of emotionally immature people tend to be black and white, with no gray areas. This rules out ambivalence, dilemmas, and other emotionally complicated experiences. - Lindsay C. Gibson