TY - JOUR
T1 - The paradoxical brain
T2 - Paradoxes impact conflict perspectives through increased neural alignment
AU - Levy, Jonathan
AU - Kluge, Annika
AU - Hameiri, Boaz
AU - Lankinen, Kaisu
AU - Bar-Tal, Daniel
AU - Halperin, Eran
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s).
PY - 2024/9/1
Y1 - 2024/9/1
N2 - Mental perspectives can sometimes be changed by psychological interventions. For instance, when applied in the context of intergroup conflicts, interventions, such as the paradoxical thinking intervention, may unfreeze ingrained negative outgroup attitudes and thereby promote progress toward peacemaking. Yet, at present, the evaluation of interventions' impact relies almost exclusively on self-reported and behavioral measures that are informative, but are also prone to social desirability and self-presentational biases. In the present study, magnetoencephalography tracked neural alignment, before and after the paradoxical thinking intervention, during the processing of auditory narratives over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and thereby evaluated the intervention's potential to change individuals' (n = 80) mental perspectives over the conflict. Compared to baseline, the conflict-targeted intervention yielded a specific significant increased neural alignment in the posterior superior temporal sulcus while processing incongruent as well as congruent political narratives of the conflict. This may be interpreted as a possible change in perspective over the conflict. The results and their interpretations are discussed in view of the critical added value of neuroimaging when assessing interventions to potentially reveal changes in mental perspectives or the way in which they are processed, even in contexts of entrenched resistance to reconsider one's ideological stance.
AB - Mental perspectives can sometimes be changed by psychological interventions. For instance, when applied in the context of intergroup conflicts, interventions, such as the paradoxical thinking intervention, may unfreeze ingrained negative outgroup attitudes and thereby promote progress toward peacemaking. Yet, at present, the evaluation of interventions' impact relies almost exclusively on self-reported and behavioral measures that are informative, but are also prone to social desirability and self-presentational biases. In the present study, magnetoencephalography tracked neural alignment, before and after the paradoxical thinking intervention, during the processing of auditory narratives over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and thereby evaluated the intervention's potential to change individuals' (n = 80) mental perspectives over the conflict. Compared to baseline, the conflict-targeted intervention yielded a specific significant increased neural alignment in the posterior superior temporal sulcus while processing incongruent as well as congruent political narratives of the conflict. This may be interpreted as a possible change in perspective over the conflict. The results and their interpretations are discussed in view of the critical added value of neuroimaging when assessing interventions to potentially reveal changes in mental perspectives or the way in which they are processed, even in contexts of entrenched resistance to reconsider one's ideological stance.
KW - Meg
KW - intergroup conflicts
KW - intergroup interventions
KW - neural alignment
KW - social neuroscience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85206286361&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/cercor/bhae353
DO - 10.1093/cercor/bhae353
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C2 - 39344195
AN - SCOPUS:85206286361
SN - 1047-3211
VL - 34
JO - Cerebral Cortex
JF - Cerebral Cortex
IS - 9
M1 - bhae353
ER -