Preventing the rejection of attitude-inconsistent arguments

• Applicant: Dr. Kevin Winter
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541068724

Societies are polarized about topics such as climate change, immigration, and measures to contain health threats. People’s attitudes on such controversial topics are often hard to change, because they are relevant to personally important values. When confronted with attitude-inconsistent arguments about such topics, people often reject them: they avoid this information in the first place (i.e., selective exposure), evaluate it as invalid, weak or unconvincing (i.e., devaluation), or invest considerable mental effort generating refutational thoughts (i.e., counterarguing). The present project seeks to investigate a content-neutral strategy to prevent the rejection of attitude-inconsistent arguments based on the induction of intraindividual conflict. Engaging in intraindividual conflicts enhances cognitive flexibility and is associated with considering alternatives beyond one’s dominant thoughts and behaviors. Once this processing style is activated, it is applied to subsequent unrelated situations and reduces biases in judgement and information processing. The goal of the present project is to investigate whether and under which conditions, inducing intraindividual conflict is an effective strategy to prevent different forms of rejection of attitude-inconsistent arguments on controversial topics. While activating a content-neutral cognitive procedure (via conflict inductions) might help to reduce forms of rejection that occur without particular mental effort (i.e., spontaneous rejection: selective exposure and devaluation), it appears unrealistic that this will suffice to prevent rejection that occurs under conditions of deep processing (i.e., controlled rejection: counterarguing and devaluation). Instead, it seems likely that the concurrent activation of a content-neutral motivation to change one’s perspective is necessary in the latter case. Conflict inductions that are personally involving (i.e., relevant to the self) might be suitable to achieve such a motivation, because they require people to question their own thoughts and behaviors on personally important issues. The present project aims to investigate the role of involvement of conflict inductions regarding their effects on different rejection strategies (i.e., spontaneous vs controlled) and to shed light on the potential long-term effects of involving conflict inductions. In doing so, the project will provide new insights into the mechanisms and consequences of intraindividual conflicts and potentially allows deriving practical implications on how to counter the rejection of attitude-inconsistent arguments in heated public debates, thereby, contributing to reducing societal polarization.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants