Tricks to moderate peoples' behaviour
Monday November 12, 2012 10:09:25 AM,
IANS
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Washington: There's a
little understood way to influence people and make them feel
greater empathy -- just slow down their responses by getting them
to struggle a little with the manner in which they receive
information.
That's the finding of researchers at the University of Illinois.
Liberals and conservatives who don't see eye to eye seem to mellow
down while reading arguments in a difficult-to-read font, suggests
the new finding.
Similarly, people with a bias for or against a defendant in a mock
trial are less likely to act on the bias if they have to struggle
to read the evidence against him, says Jesse Preston, professor of
psychology at the University of Illinois, who conducted the study
with graduate student Ivan Hernandez.
The new research is one of two studies to show that subtle
manipulations that affect how people take in information can
reduce political polarisation, the Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology reports.
By asking participants to read an overtly political argument about
capital punishment in a challenging font, researchers sought to
disrupt participants' usual attitudes to the subject, says
Hernandez, according to an Illinois statement.
Liberals and conservatives who read the argument in an
easy-to-read font were much more polarised on the subject than
those who had to slog through the difficult version.
In a separate experiment, people were shown documents that praised
or criticized the behaviour of a defendant in a mock trial before
they saw the (rather sketchy) evidence against him.
As expected, those who read an unflattering account of the
defendant's character were much more likely to convict him than
those who read a more complimentary report. The two sides were far
apart on their assessment of the evidence.
"But when people read a difficult-to-read summary of the evidence,
then they became more moderate. We showed that if we can slow
people down, if we can make them stop relying on their gut
reaction... it can make them more moderate; it can have them start
doubting their initial beliefs and start seeing the other side of
the argument a little bit more," Hernandez said.
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