Partisans¹ beware! Some of your most cherished political attitudes may be malleable²（可塑的）! Researchers report that simply answering three "why" questions on an innocuous（无伤大雅的） topic leads people to be more moderate in their views on an otherwise polarizing political issue. The research, described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, explored attitudes toward what some people refer to as the ground zero mosque³, an Islamic community center and mosque built two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City. When the Islamic center first was proposed it sparked a heated debate pitting proponents⁴（支持者） of religious freedom against those who felt the center should be moved away from the site of the 9/11 attacks out of reverence⁵ for those killed by Muslim extremists.

 

"We used the ground zero mosque as a particularly polarizing issue," said University of Illinois psychology⁶ professor Jesse Preston, who supervised the research with graduate students Daniel Yang and Ivan Hernandez. "People feel strongly about it generally one way or the other." Yang, now a postdoctoral researcher at Yale, designed the study with Preston and led the experiments.

 

The researchers used techniques known to induce（诱导） an abstract mindset in people, Preston said. Previous studies had shown that asking people to think broadly about a subject (with "why" rather than "how" questions, for example) makes it easier for them to look at an issue from different perspectives.

 

" 'Why' questions make people think more in terms of the big picture, more in terms of intentions and goals, whereas more concrete 'how' questions are focused on something very specific, something right in front of you, basically," Preston said.

 

Previous research showed that abstract thinking enhances creativity and open-mindedness, but this is the first study to test its power to moderate political beliefs, Preston said.

 

The interventions⁷ were simple. In the first experiment the researchers established that, after viewing an image of an airplane flying into one of the World Trade Center towers, liberals and conservatives held opposing attitudes toward the ground zero mosque and community center.

 

A second study repeated the first with new participants and included one minor⁸ -- but significant -- change. Before they gave their views on the mosque and community center, participants answered either three consecutive⁹ "why" questions or three consecutive "how" questions on an unrelated topic -- in this case, about maintaining their health.

 

The "why" questions, but not the "how" questions, moved liberals and conservatives closer together on the issue of the Islamic center, Preston said.

 

"We observed that liberals and conservatives became more moderate in their attitudes," she said. "After this very brief task that just put them in this abstract mindset, they were more willing to consider the point of view of the opposition¹⁰."

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