The paradoxical brain : paradoxes impact conflict perspectives through increased neural alignment

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Access rights

openAccess

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2024-09-28

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

12

Series

Cerebral Cortex, Volume 34, issue 9, pp. 1-12

Abstract

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.

Description

Keywords

MCCA, MEG, paradoxical thinking, social neuroscience, intergroup interventions, Meg, intergroup conflicts, neural alignment

Other note

Citation

Levy, J, Kluge, A, Hameiri, B, Lankinen, K, Bar-Tal, D & Halperin, E 2024, ' The paradoxical brain : paradoxes impact conflict perspectives through increased neural alignment ', Cerebral Cortex, vol. 34, no. 9, bhae353, pp. 1-12 . https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae353