BY DEBORAH NETBURN LOS ANGELES TIMES ( TNS )

How do you get people with extreme beliefs to change their minds , or at least open them a little ?

It may sound counterintuitive , but a new study suggests that instead of arguing with them , you might try agreeing — with great enthusiasm .

As anyone living through the 2016 U . S . presidential campaign knows , verbal arguments are rarely effective when people have made up their minds and their belief has become part of their identity .

Experts say that once this happens , vigorous and impassioned debate becomes counter-productive , leading ideological opponents to dig in their heels and refuse to listen to the other side .

Think : “ I don ’ t think he ’ s qualified no matter what you say .” Or , “ she ’ s crooked and you can ’ t convince me otherwise .” But there may be another way . In a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Israeli researchers show that it is possible to challenge strongly held beliefs by employing a strategy of agreeing with an extreme view , and then amplifying it until it reaches an absurd conclusion .

The technique is called paradoxical thinking , and it is based in part on the debating technique called reductio ad absurdum .

The idea is to exaggerate a person ’ s core belief in such a way that it leads the believer to see his or her stance as irrational .

For example , imagine if a friend with a two-pack-a-day habit said to you , “ All those studies that say smoking causes cancer don ’ t prove anything .”

Using the paradoxical thinking technique , you might respond , “ Totally ! Lung cancer obviously has nothing to do with smoking .”

That statement would probably sound extreme and illogical , even to your friend , and it might cause her to wonder if her own statement sounded kind of extreme too . In turn , she might re-evaluate how she thinks about smoking and its relationship to lung cancer — at least a little .

Eran Halperin , a psychology professor and head of the Emotion in Conflict lab at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya , Israel , has spent the past several years trying to see if this strategy could be employed to soften the minds of right-wing , hawkish Israelis and prompt them to consider a peaceful resolution to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict . Efforts to negotiate an end to disputes related to territory , political recognition and other issues have been stalled for years , resulting in periodic flare-ups of violence .

The work culminated in a paradoxicalthinking advertising campaign that Halperin and his team staged over six weeks last fall in the small central Israeli city of Givat Shmuel .

The team selected the city of 25,000 because of its political leanings . The population is mostly religious , and the conservative parties Likud and Jewish Home garnered 63 percent of the vote in the most recent national election .

Before launching the intervention , the team spent more than a year working with branding and advertising agencies to hone their message and materials . Early versions were tested among small focus groups in Halperin ’ s lab , and only the most effective were rolled out in Givat Shmuel .

What they came up with was this : “ Without it , we would never be just . For justice , we probably need the conflict .”

“ The basic idea was to take some of Israelis ’ most common beliefs — we are the most moral society , we are the ultimate victims — and take that to an absurd conclusion by saying in order to feel moral , we must preserve the conflict ,” Halperin said .

In September 2015 , the researchers started plastering their message on billboards throughout the city and on online ad banners linking to YouTube videos the team had made .

The timing could not have been better : That month marked the start of what became known as the Knife Intifada , a wave of stabbings and other attacks carried out largely by “ lone wolf ” attackers .

In the final weeks of the campaign , a ground team of about 10 people hit the streets to hand out 4,000 pamphlets that articulated the “ we need the conflict ” message .

Importantly , the people of Givat Shmuel were never tipped off that the ads were part of a social experiment .

Over six weeks , there were more than 4.4 million exposures to the online banners , 95 percent of which were in the city and its surroundings . Additionally , the videos were viewed almost 1 million times , and 80 percent of those viewers were from the local area .

“ We believe that most people saw one of our ads ,” Halperin said .

To test the campaign ’ s effectiveness , the researchers surveyed more than 200 residents of Givat Shmuel about their attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before and after the intervention . As a control , they posed the same survey questions to more than 300 residents from nearby cities .

Both cities had a similar political profile , but the control group lived far enough away from Givat Shmuel that they weren ’ t likely to have encountered the ads , the authors said .

Survey questions included asking participants how strongly they agreed with statements like “ Despite Israel ’ s desire for peace , the Arabs have repeatedly forced war ,” and “ I think that Israel is not doing enough to try to solve the conflict in a peaceful manner .”

Over time , the researchers said they found a significant change in attitudes among Givat Shmuel residents . Compared with the control group , they shifted from more hawkish to more conciliatory .

“ It ’ s hard to put an exact number on it , but roughly , we found meaningful change in about 20 to 25 percent of participants ,” Halperin said .

The team also found that the intervention worked best among the most hawkish participants , which is what the group expected .

However , the intervention may have had an unintended effect among centrist participants , causing some of them to become more hawkish than centrists in the control group .

“ It is possible that at least some participants perceived the paradoxical thinking messages literally ... which led to this surprising effect ,” the authors wrote . This result deserves more investigation , they added .

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Amid Syria ’ s violence , diplomats produce ideas but no truce

LAUSANNE , Switzerland — The United States , Russia and seven other would-be Syria mediators ended a 4½-hour meeting Saturday without agreement or concrete steps to match what America ’ s top diplomat described as the urgent crisis in the city of Aleppo . Instead , the envoys said only that new ideas were proposed and more discussions planned .

The lackluster result from the gathering in Switzerland highlighted the world ’ s inability to find a peaceful path out of a conflict that has killed as many as a halfmillion people , contributed to Europe ’ s worst refugee crisis since World War II and created a vast space of instability that the Islamic State group has exploited .

With the Syrian and Russian governments pressing an offensive against rebelheld parts of Aleppo , no one predicted a breakthrough . Yet after last month ’ s collapse of a cease-fire and even U . S . charges of Russian war crimes , U . S . Secretary of State John Kerry ’ s portrayal of the result as “ exactly what we wanted ” sounded unconvincing .

“ Nobody wants to do this in a sloppy way ,” Kerry said of his new diplomatic effort , no longer between just Washington and Moscow but designed to include all the major international players in Syria ’ s civil war .

O ffi cial : Mom jailed with daughter

mother who mailed drugs to her incarcerated daughter is now an inmate in the same Florida jail .

Monroe County sheriff ’ s spokeswoman Becky Herrin said in a news release that a deputy at the jail near Key West found the envelope and noticed it had a chemical smell . He opened the envelope and saw a substance inside .

An incident report said the substance turned out to be buprenorphine , a synthetic opioid . Deputies arrested 55-year-old Nadine Carroll on Thursday .

Now , Carroll is in the same jail as daughter Shannon Carroll .

Records show Shannon Carroll was arrested Sept . 15 on charges of driving with a suspended license and possession of cocaine .

Herald wire reports

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KILLEEN DAILY HERALD | SUNDAY , OCTOBER 16 , 2016 NATION & WORLD A5

NATION & WORLD

The idea is to exaggerate a person ’ s core belief in such a way that it leads the believer to see his or her stance as irrational .

How to counter extremist views ? Try agreeing after mailing drugs to her KEY WEST , Fla . — Authorities said a

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