To resolve conflict, believe that people can change

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20833-to-resolve-conflict-believe-that-people-can-change.html

To resolve conflict, believe that people can change

19:00 25 August 2011 by Michael Marshall

A major roadblock in any negotiation can often be that each side believes their opponent's position is unmovable, according to a group of researchers in Israel. Stand-offs, they say, can end if those involved think their counterparts can adopt a flexible mindset.

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Eran Halperin of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel and colleagues surveyed 500 Israeli Jews on whether they believed groups of people had fixed natures, and on their attitudes towards the Palestinians. Volunteers who believed that groups could change tended to have more positive attitudes towards a negotiated peace process.

To find out if they could change those attitudes, the team then ran three experiments on 76 Israel-born Jews, 59 Israeli Arabs and 53 Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories. In each case, volunteers were randomly asked to read one of two articles, which portrayed groups of people as having either a fixed or a flexible nature. Jewish people were then asked about their attitudes towards Israeli Arabs and Palestinians and vice-versa, as well as how they felt about negotiating and compromising in a peace process.

Volunteers responded differently, depending on which article they had read: those who had read about flexible nature were more open to negotiations and compromises, when compared with those who had been given an article about inflexible human nature. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1202925