title: Moderating attitudes in times of violence through paradoxical thinking intervention.
abstract: In the current paper, we report a large-scale randomized field experiment, conducted among Jewish Israelis during widespread violence. The study examines the effectiveness of a "real world," multichanneled paradoxical thinking intervention, with messages disseminated through various means of communication (i.e., online, billboards, flyers). Over the course of 6 wk, we targeted a small city in the center of Israel whose population is largely rightwing and religious. Based on the paradoxical thinking principles, the intervention involved transmission of messages that are extreme but congruent with the shared Israeli ethos of conflict. To examine the intervention's effectiveness, we conducted a large-scale field experiment (prepost design) in which we sampled participants from the city population (n = 215) and compared them to a control condition (from different places of residence) with similar demographic and political characteristics (n = 320). Importantly, participants were not aware that the intervention was related to the questionnaires they answered. Results showed that even in the midst of a cycle of ongoing violence within the context of one of the most intractable conflicts in the world, the intervention led hawkish participants to decrease their adherence to conflict-supporting attitudes across time. Furthermore, compared with the control condition, hawkish participants that were exposed to the paradoxical thinking intervention expressed less support for aggressive policies that the government should consider as a result of the escalation in violence and more support for conciliatory policies to end the violence and promote a long-lasting agreement.
authors: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel; School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya 46150, Israel; boazhameiri@gmail.com eranh75@hotmail.com.
authors: Boaz
authors: B
authors: Hameiri
authors: School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya 46150, Israel; Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
authors: Roni
authors: R
authors: Porat
authors: School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Bar-Tal
authors: School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya 46150, Israel; boazhameiri@gmail.com eranh75@hotmail.com.
authors: Eran
authors: E
authors: Halperin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression; D018912:Arabs / Q000523:psychology*; D001290:Attitude / Q000208:ethnology; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D007585:Jews / Q000523:psychology*; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011057:Politics; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D023481:Terrorism; D014754:Violence / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: field experiment; intractable conflict; paradoxical thinking; psychological intervention