Apprehension or motivation to defend attitudes? Exploring the underlying threat mechanism in inoculation-induced resistance to persuasion

ABSTRACT

This study questions the traditional conceptualization of the threat component of inoculation and compares it to an alternative operationalization that was hypothesized to better capture the psychological function of threat according to inoculation theory, focusing less on an apprehensive response in favor of how inoculation treatments cognitively function to motivate resistance. Two measures of threat were contrasted by examining resistance to 9/11 Truth conspiracy propaganda. The results revealed motivational threat was conceptually distinct from the traditional threat measure, better predicted by inoculation treatments, less related to fear, more predictive of resistance to attitude change, and more supportive of inoculation theory when mediating the relationship between inoculation and resistance.

KEYWORDS:

• Inoculation
• resistance
• threat
• measurement
• attitudes

Notes

1. If a single item was dropped from the traditional threat measure, alpha reliability improved to .90. However, to be consistent with the typical traditional threat measurement, this item was retained for confirmatory factor analysis and was included in the composite score used in correlation comparisons.