Flexing the Extremes: Increasing Cognitive Flexibility With a Paradoxical Leading Questions Intervention

Since the increase in numbers of refugees worldwide, the acceptance of refugees in host countries is a highly contested topic. Negative attitudes towards refugees pose a challenge to both integration efforts and social cohesion. So-called paradoxical interventions help mitigating such extreme attitudes, but little is known about the cognitive processes elicited by these interventions. This research investigated whether a paradoxical leading-questions intervention targeting anti-refugee attitudes increases cognitive flexibility, especially among those with anti-refugee attitudes. Results of two preregistered experiments with general-population samples (N= 306) provide evidence that participants with anti-refugee attitudes showed higher cognitive flexibility in the paradoxical condition compared to control conditions. Thereby, this research proposes a cognitive foundation for the benefits of paradoxical interventions in intergroup contexts and suggests novel indications as to why these interventions are effective. We discuss the potential of paradoxical interventions for other important socially contested contexts, such as vaccination and climate change.