Paradoxical thinking as a new avenue of intervention to promote peace

Abstract

In societies involved in an intractable conflict, there are strong socio-psychological barriers that contribute to the continuation and intractability of the conflict. Based on a unique field study conducted in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we offer a new avenue to overcome these barriers by exposing participants to a long-term paradoxical intervention campaign expressing extreme ideas that are congruent with the shared ethos of conflict. Results show that the intervention, although counterintuitive, led participants to express more conciliatory attitudes regarding the conflict, particularly among participants with center and right political orientation. Most importantly, the intervention even influenced participants' actual voting patterns in the 2013 Israeli general elections: Participants who were exposed to the paradoxical intervention, which took place in proximity to the general elections, reported that they tended to vote more for dovish parties, which advocate a peaceful resolution to the conflict. These effects were long lasting, as the participants in the intervention condition expressed more conciliatory attitudes when they were reassessed 1 y after the intervention. Based on these results, we propose a new layer to the general theory of persuasion based on the concept of paradoxical thinking.attitude change | psychological intervention I n recent years, the study of intractable conflicts has gained prominence within the social sciences (1, 2). This type of conflict is very difficult to resolve peacefully because it is fueled by socio-psychological barriers that play a key role in this impasse (3, 4). One major implication of these barriers is the tendency to freeze on conflict supporting societal beliefs and attitudes, and thus preserve hostility between the adversaries (5, 6). [Societal beliefs are defined as shared cognitions by society members that address themes and issues that society members are particularly occupied with, and which contribute to their sense of uniqueness (7).]Freezing is characterized by rigidity and close-mindedness, such that information incongruent with the reigning cognitiveemotional structure is likely to be ignored, rejected, misinterpreted, or forgotten, whereas congruent information is accepted as valid (8, 9; see also ref. 10). In fact, cognitive freezing encourages tunnel vision with respect to the conflict and the means to resolve it. Thus, one major challenge for scholars and peace activists is to overcome these deeply rooted socio-psychological barriers by unfreezing the held conflict supporting collective narratives. A successful unfreezing process should increase the individual's openness to previously contradictory views regarding the conflict, the adversary, and the in-group (5). With this challenge, a growing body of research has attempted to identify methods of intervention that can unfreeze deeply rooted conflict-supporting narratives among groups in conflict (11-16).In principle, most current interventions directly provide information th...

Moderating attitudes in times of violence through paradoxical thinking intervention

“…Thus, to examine our hypotheses and based on our previous findings (see ref. 13), we conducted all of the analyses with political orientation as a continuous moderator, while controlling for participants' level of religiosity. Importantly, the results we next detail remain identical when not controlling for levels of religiosity.…”

“…13 (21) suggests that a therapist need not oppose the held attitudes and beliefs of a patient, as this would only lead to resistance, but rather use psychological judo-that is, to slightly turn or reframe the patients held attitudes and beliefs-to create a momentum toward a change. One especially relevant technique motivational interviewing offers is amplified reflection, in which the therapist reflects back what a patient has said in an amplified or exaggerated form.…”

“…In a study we recently published (13), Jewish Israeli participants were randomly assigned either to a paradoxical thinking media campaign with messages related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or to a control condition in which participants were exposed to generic television commercials unrelated to this conflict. The paradoxical thinking campaign included YouTube video clips expressing ideas that were consistent with the shared conflict-supporting societal attitudes and beliefs but much more extreme.…”

“…It does so by creating a multichanneled campaign based on the theoretical framework of paradoxical thinking (12,13). Although attempts of promoting peaceful and harmonious intergroup relations among adversary groups have received increasing scholarly awareness, only limited research examined largescale interventions in contexts of widespread violence, when they are needed the most (e.g., refs.…”

Conflict resolution: Wars without end

“…In Israel, for example, a series of anti-conflict interventions being developed under the leadership of psychologist Eran Halperin at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel have proved effective in making people more open to seeing things from the other side's point of view [3][4][5] .…”