Bob, I agree with everything you say!

How to counter people with extreme views: Try agreeing with them


Deborah Netburn

How do you get people with extreme beliefs to change their minds, or at least open them a little?

It may sound counterintuitive, but a new study suggests that instead of arguing with them, you might try agreeing — with great enthusiasm.

As anyone living through the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign knows, verbal arguments are rarely effective when people have made up their minds and their belief has become part of their identity.

Experts say that once this happens, vigorous and impassioned debate becomes counterproductive, leading ideological opponents to dig in their heels and refuse to listen to the other side.

Think: “I don’t think he’s qualified no matter what you say.” Or, “she’s crooked and you can’t convince me otherwise.”

But there may be another way.

In a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Israeli researchers show that it is possible to challenge strongly held beliefs by employing a strategy of agreeing with an extreme view, and then amplifying it until it reaches an absurd conclusion.

The technique is called paradoxical thinking, and it is based in part on the debating technique called reductio ad absurdum.

The idea is to exaggerate a person’s core belief in such a way that it leads the believer to see his or her stance as irrational.

For example, imagine if a friend with a two-pack-a-day habit said to you, “All those studies that say smoking causes cancer don’t prove anything.”

Using the paradoxical thinking technique, you might respond, “Totally! Lung cancer obviously has nothing to do with smoking.”

That statement would probably sound extreme and illogical, even to your friend, and it might cause her to wonder if her own statement sounded kind of extreme too. In turn, she might reevaluate how she thinks about smoking and its relationship to lung cancer — at least a little.

Read the entire article here:

www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-extremist-views-moderate-20161010-snap-story.html