Inducing Resistance to Conspiracy Theory Propaganda: Testing Inoculation and Metainoculation Strategies

“Inoculation can reduce the influence of conspiracy theories by increasing the degree of scepticism towards conspiratorial claims [48], and has been shown to convey resistance to misinformation regarding agricultural biotechnology [49].”

“…the context of differing prior attitudes (e.g., see also Pryor & Steinfatt, 1978; Wood, 2007), or for an issue that is not a cultural truism (e.g., Banas & Miller, 2013; Jolley & Douglas, 2017), the highly politicized nature of the climate change debate pushes the boundary conditions of…”

“Additionally, Banas and Miller (2013) have shown that it is possible to inoculate against a conspiracy theory through the use of analytic, cognitively focused communi cation efforts.”

“Yet, thus far, scholarship has primarily focused on inoculating study participants against persuasion attempts pertaining to a particular topic, such as climate change (van der Linden et al., 2017b) or 9/11 conspiracies (Banas and Miller, 2013).”

“Such studies show that popular movies (Butler, Koopman, and Zimbardo 1995; Mulligan and Habel 2013), documentary films (Banas and Miller 2013), news reports, and other forms of information (Bost and Prunier 2013; Raab et al. 2013; Stempel, Hargrove, and Stempel 2007; Swami et al. 2013) can drive…”

“Banas and Miller (2013) directly tested this question, examining the effectiveness of two types of anti-conspiracy arguments.”

“Similarly, Banas and Miller (2013) were able to inoculate people with facts in the context of ‘sticky’ 9/11 conspiracy theories.”

“…include presenting and then debunking pro-conspiracy arguments ( 48 , 49 ), attempting to increase resistance to conspiracy theories in general ( 50 , 51 ), and presenting arguments against a specific conspiracy theory to randomly selected crowd workers ( 52 – 55 ), which have been targeted…”

“Similar findings have been reported by others across domains, including climate change (Cook et al., 2017; van der Linden, Leiserowitz, 2017), emerging energy technologies (Bolsen & Druckman, 2015), and conspiracy theories about 9/11 and vaccine safety (Banas & Miller, 2013; Jolley & Douglas, 2017).”

“…resistance to viruses by exposing one to a weakened version of virus-causing germs, a limited exposure to harmful misinformation and reasonable counterarguments can help limit the extent to which such misinformation takes hold in the future (Banas & Miller, 2013; McGuire & Papageorgis, 1961).”

“…study: Bad News Intervention Previous work has shown that inoculation theory can be used to combat various types of online misinformation, for example about conspiracy theories (Banas & Miller, 2013), climate change (van der Linden et al., 2017), and immigration (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2018).”

“This control message has been used in a number of inoculation studies (e.g., Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“So-called “ inoculation ” has been found to reduce the continued influence effect (Cook et al., 2017; Guess et al., 2020) and to boost cognitive resistance to conspiratorial thinking (Banas & Miller, 2013; Lewandowsky & Cook, 2020), including anti-vaccination theories (Jolley & Douglas, 2017).”

“The most common form of inoculation has been fact-based, where anticipated misinformation is demonstrated to be wrong through factual explanations (Banas and Miller 2013).”

“While some researchers have tested the effectiveness of inoculation strategies in the context of misor disinformation, their studies do not deal with astroturfing campaigns or state-induced propaganda in general, but rather with conspiracy theories (Banas and Miller, 2013), media reports on climate change (Cook et al.”

“Most of the existing studies regarding the nature of conspiracy theories are descriptive; moreover, experimental research exploring the possibility of CT belief change is very rare (Banas and Miller, 2013; Swami et al., 2014).”

“[21] Metainoculation (logic based) 2 Experimental Betweengroups No Generic attitudes (Burgoon, Cohen, Miller, & Montgomery, 1978) Specific NR 0.”

“Psychological interventions like priming (37) or inoculation (57) showed preliminary, but promising results in reducing CB.”

“Banas and Miller (2013) examined the inoculation effects of fact-versus logic-based messages, which used either example argumentation or critical reasoning strategy to justify the claims.”

“Scholars have recently examined the potential spread of inoculation in postinoculation talk (Ivanov et al., 2012), implications of psychological reactance for inoculation (Miller et al., 2013), and potential to inoculate against the effects of inoculation (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“Participants in control conditions read a commonly used control message about sushi (e.g., Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“Participants were randomly assigned to read an inoculation message or an irrelevant control message about the history of sushi used in previous inoculation research (e.g., Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“[6] causal narratives of an event as a covert plan orchestrated by a secret cabal of people (or organizations) instead of a random or natural happening [7] an organization made up of individuals or groups was or is acting covertly to achieve some malevolent end.”

“…(for reviews, see Banas & Rains, 2010; Lewandowsky & van der Linden, 2021), including misinformation about climate change (Cook et al., 2017; van der Linden et al., 2017), conspiracy theories (Banas & Miller, 2013; Jolley & Douglas, 2017), and astroturfing by Russian bots (Zerback et al., 2020).”

“…against (online) conspiratorial content by preemptively warning and exposing them to weakened doses of the arguments and techniques that are used by conspiracy theorists (Banas & Miller, 2013; Basol et al., 2020; Jolly & Douglas, 2017; Roozenbeek et al., 2020; Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019).”

“While a lot of effort in both research and practice is put into debunking conspiracy theories or persuading those who believe in them (e.g., Banas & Miller, 2013; Cook, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, 2017; Jolley & Douglas, 2017), our results suggest a different (probably complementary) strategy.”

“ine conspiracy theories. . 2.1 Individual Factors in Conspiratorial Belief Conspiracy theories are attempts to explain the occurrence of an event as a covert plot orchestrated by secret organizations [2]. Research on conspiracy theory adoption have largely focused on individual’s psychological and epistemological char…”

“Technique-based inoculations focus on building resistance against the rhetorical techniques and strategies that are commonly used to mislead people, such as the use of emotionally manipulative language,(50) evoking outgroup animosity and polarisation,(51,52) logical fallacies,(53) fake experts,(54,55) or conspiratoria…”

“While both inoculation message types have been effective in reducing the influence of persuasion, there is some evidence they may differ in the mechanisms responsible for these effects (Amazeen, 2021; Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“There is mixed evidence regarding the effectiveness of interventions in experimental contexts for both decreasing belief in misinformation and for self-reported sharing intentions on social media (Banas & Miller, 2013; Clayton et al., 2019; Freeze et al., 2020; Nyhan, 2021).”

“…supportive messages, inoculation messages have been successfully applied to numerous contexts (see Compton, 2013) as more recent inoculation scholarship has extended our understanding of the theory (see Compton, 2013) and its boundaries (e.g. Banas & Miller, 2013; Ivanov et al., 2012, 2015).”

“cination and 9/11 conspiracy theories have shown the effectiveness of these techniques [47, 48].”

“…(Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2018), climate change (van der Linden et al., 2017), biotechnology (Wood, 2007), “sticky” 9/11 conspiracy theories (Banas & Miller, 2013; Jolley & Douglas, 2017), public health (Compton et al., 2016) and the spread of fake news and misinformation (Roozenbeek &…”

“…stimuli easier to recognize — similar to the fi nding by Banas and Miller that interventions based on speci fi c facts were more effective than logic-based interventions 42 , and the meta-analytic fi nding that content-based inoculation yields larger effects than technique-based inoculation 16 .”

“Those who were randomized into the strategic silence condition did not receive a proactive message and instead reviewed an irrelevant message about sushi history commonly used in inoculation research (e.g., Banas & Miller, 2013; Banas & Richards, 2017).”

“Similarly, Banas and Miller (2013) found successful inoculation effects after exposure to a 40 min long message (taken from a conspiracist documentary film), even when participants were warned that inoculation was an attempt to influence their rate of attitude change.”

“For example, Banas and Miller (2013) did not erode print-gen-”

“Traditionally, inoculation was thought to generate cognitive counterarguing via a central route to information processing (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“…messages that offered fact-based rebuttals of the claims were able to mitigate effects of the 9/ 11 Truth conspiracy film, Loose Change (with fact-based treatments working best), 69 and in another, inoculation protected against the influence of an anti-vaccination conspiracy film, Vaxxed .”

“…shown to act as a “cognitive vaccine” and provide individuals with the resources necessary to effectively withstand later misinformation attempts (Banas & Miller, 2013; Basol et al., 2020; Cook et al., 2017; Maertens et al., 2020; Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019; van der Linden et al., 2017;…”

“Inoculation research focused initially on inoculation against specific arguments and misleading techniques on a particular topic of misinformation [32, 33].”

“Explaining this perspective, Banas and Miller (2013) argued that conspiracy theories provide a sense of order in a chaotic world, while serving as a pleasurable form of resistance and a “means of self-purification through scapegoating” (186).”

“…yet to give a clear set of instruction on how to achieve this, results thus far suggest focusing primarily on rational arguments, instead of empathizing ones, and sound facts (Banas & Miller, 2013; Orosz et al., 2016) serve to debunk circulating conspiracy theories (Warner & Neville-Shepard, 2014).”

“Two common inoculation approaches are fact-based and logic-based (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“The two types of fallacies are structural, where the presence of the fallacy can be gleaned from”

“Previously conducted inoculation studies served as a template for the stimuli, which provide participants with a forewarning message enacting a sense of threat (Banas & Miller, 2013; Ivanov et al., 2012).”

“Along the same lines, knowing the types of sensemaking needs served by conspiracy theories could inform preemptive strategies like inoculating the public against them (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“The control message was borrowed verbatim from Banas and Miller (2013).”

“While inoculation theory has been applied to a variety of issues in political and health communication (Compton and Pfau, 2005; Banas and Rains, 2010), it has recently been proposed as a promising approach for combating misinformation (Banas and Miller, 2013).”

“However, one potential pitfall is that participants through inoculation might not only come in contact with anti-conspiracy arguments, but also with the conspiracy itself (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“People also use fictional media that can affect such beliefs (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“Notably, in recent years an effort was made to inoculate people against conspiracy theories [72–74] and misinformation, especially in the context of climate change.”

“The most relevant to our study is the “prebunking” intervention, which draws on the psychological inoculation theory and suggests a positive effect in cultivating “mental antibodies” against fake news and misinformation regarding climate change and the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“…with the caveats above, there is a better tool for both combating misinformation and for training broader sets of skills: from extant evidence, the most promising tactic involves inoculation, or “prebunking” (Banas and Miller 2013; Cook et al. 2017; Jolley and Douglas 2017; Roozenbeek et al. 2020).”

“Additionally, inoculation can operate through motivational or refutational mechanisms (Banas and Miller 2013).”

“Inoculation can also work heuristically through peripheral cues requiring minimal cognitive effort (Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“Inoculation has been shown to decrease the likelihood of believing in conspiracy theories (Banas & Miller, 2013; Jolley & Douglas, 2017), likely also because it increases deception monitoring and deeper processing—in other words: deliberation (Compton et al., 2021).”

“…should be directed towards improving inoculation interventions, which have been found to be highly effective in reducing reliance on misinformation (Banas & Miller, 2013; Buczel et al., 2022; Cook et al., 2017; Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019; Tay et al., 2022; van der Linden et al., 2017).”

“That is, a disclosure, on its own, has been found to inoculate people against a type of message – such as native advertising disguised as a journalistic article – rather than the content of the message (Amazeen, 2020a; Banas & Miller, 2013).”

“…gaps between existing research streams on disengagement from conspiracy theorizing (Section 2.2.3) 2.1 Conspiracy Theory Engagement: Motivations, Worldviews, and Impact Conspiracy theories are attempts to explain the occurrence of an event as a covert plot orchestrated by secret organizations [5].”

“Another inoculation strategy against misinformation that has received less focus is logic-based inoculation (Banas & Miller, 2013): preemptive refutation of the critical thinking errors that make us vulnerable to misinformation in the first place.”

“This approach draws on psychological inoculation theory to help cultivate ‘mental antibodies’ against fake news and misinformation [5].”

“More recently, Banas and Miller (2013) found that an inoculation message could thwart the effectiveness of a subsequent inoculation message—without mentioning the issue at all—suggesting that a heuristic might be at work.”

“If people are educated about the threat of disinformation—for example, through increased media literacy [123]—and forewarned that they may be targeted, they will become immunised against disinformation [124, 125].”

“Debunking and fact-checking initiatives may be a reasonable way to undermine the belief in traditional con-spiracy theories (Banas and Miller, 2013).”

“Previously, Banas and Miller (2013) reasoned that because individuals are drawn to conspiracy theories for psychological and sociological needs, and those needs are not likely to be affected by inoculation treatments, perhaps “inoculation individuals will be less prone to address those needs in a…”

“3C) 61,62 .”