Effects of inoculation interventions on impressions of mock political candidates

Inoculation interventions have been a major focus of recent research attempting to combat the influence of disinformation in our society. However, no prior work has examined whether these interventions specifically reduce the impact of unproven or false accusations against politicians, which is a major vector by which disinformation can influence voting behavior in democracies. Here we demonstrate, through 11 studies, that interventions designed to increase awareness of manipulative messaging, such as the use of emotionally-charged language, can reduce the impact of derogatory accusations on impressions of novel mock political candidates. Individuals who viewed video or gamified inoculations showed a reduced impact of accusations on subjective ratings for all candidates about whom accusations of misconduct were made, relative to those who did not receive the inoculation. These effects were strongest when the truth status was ambiguous, but there is also some beneficial impact even when an accusation is clearly refuted, i.e., a reduction in Continued Influence Effects. Overall, these findings indicate that inoculation interventions that train citizens to be aware of manipulative techniques can effectively reduce the impact of unproven derogatory accusations against politicians.