Paradoxical thinking and attitudes toward prostitution: preliminary experimental findings

Attitudes on socially consequential issues are often resistant to direct persuasion. Paradoxical thinking is a persuasion technique that presents exaggerated or absurd arguments for a position that may make people object to and reduce resistance to persuasion attempts. Across three preregistered experiments, we tested the effects of absurd paradoxical messages regarding attitudes toward prostitution. In Studies 1-2, paradoxical pro-prostitution messages produced reductions in favorable attitudes toward prostitution relative to conventional negative messages, and indirectly predicted willingness to support restrictive policy action through attitudinal change. Study 3 provided a process-focused test, showing that disagreement with the paradoxical message predicted reduced favorable attitudes toward prostitution, which were associated with greater willingness to support restrictive policy action. These findings provide evidence for the effectiveness of paradoxical arguments in a moralized social issue, while highlighting boundary conditions and the need for further research.