The paradoxical thinking ‘sweet spot’: The role of recipients’ latitude of rejection in the effectiveness of paradoxical thinking messages targeting anti-refugee attitudes in Israel

Abstract

The current research examined whether for a message that is based on the paradoxical thinking principles—i.e., providing extreme, exaggerated, or even absurd views, that are congruent with the held views of the message recipients—to be effective, it needs to hit a ‘sweet spot’ and lead to a contrast effect. That is, it moderates the view of the message's recipients. In the framework of attitudes toward African refugees and asylum seekers in Israel by Israeli Jews, we found that compared to more moderate messages, an extreme, but not too extreme, message was effective in leading to unfreezing for high morally convicted recipients. The very extreme message similarly led to high levels of surprise and identity threat as the extreme message that was found to be effective. However, it was so extreme and absurd that it was rejected automatically. This was manifested in high levels of disagreement compared to all other messages, rendering it less effective compared to the extreme, paradoxical thinking, message. We discuss these findings’ practical and theoretical implications for the paradoxical thinking conceptual framework as an attitude change intervention, and for social judgment theory.

Behavioral and psychosocial factors associated with COVID-19 skepticism in the United States

“…If this group is similar to those who hold antivaccination beliefs, it is not likely that additional information is likely to change their beliefs (Horne et al, 2015 ). It may be a better use of resources to target health education interventions at individuals who have a greater latitude of acceptance for COVID-19 information as compared to those who have more extreme views (Hameiri, Idan, Nabet, Bar-Tal, & Halperin, 2020 ; Horne et al, 2015 ). Unfortunately, this finding suggests that mandatory prevention behaviors, such as mask wearing, may be needed since some people are downplaying the severity of the disease.…”

Neural alignment during outgroup intervention predicts future change of affect towards outgroup

“…While we were unable to detect any significant intersubject correlations during the first four minutes of paradoxical thinking intervention, a significant component appeared during the last two minutes of the intervention. In all paradoxical thinking studies so far, the intervention is viewed as one unit and any measures of effect are collected after the intervention or averaged across items ( Hameiri et al. 2020 ; Hautala et al.…”

Open-Mindedness Interventions: An Integrative Review

“…If they are exaggerated too much, they fall into a participant's latitude of rejection (the range of opinions that the participant considers to be unacceptable), whereby they are immediately dismissed and do not cause participants to reevaluate their own views. Hameiri et al (2020) argue that paradoxical statements should aim for a 'sweet spot' in which they are only slightly exaggerated. They tested this with regard to Israeli Jews' opinions about refugees and asylum seekers.…”