Nuances about the Role and Impact of Affect in Inoculation

Effects of Postinoculation Talk on Resistance to Influence

“…To avoid message, topic, and/or issue effects, this experiment used four issues previously featured in inoculation studies (see Pfau et al, 2009); namely: (a) whether the United States should completely legalize the sale and use of marijuana; (b) whether the government should restrict violent content within TV programming; (c) whether the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns should be banned throughout the United States; and (d) whether gambling should be completely legalized throughout the United States. Each of these issues meet two important criteria necessary for inoculation; the first requiring attitudes or positions on an issue to be firmly in place at the time of an inoculation, and the second requiring a division of opinions both in support of and in opposition to key positions held regarding that issue (Pfau et al, 2009).…”

“…Designed in a similar manner, and based on previous inoculation studies (see Pfau et al, 2009), the attack messages used in Phase 3 provided study participants with reasons they should change their positions on the issues at hand 6 . The specific argument content of each attack message was different from the specific argument content addressed in each of the relevant inoculation messages to ensure the potential effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the attack messages would not solely be attributable to the specific content of the inoculation messages, themselves.…”

“…Since the late 1980s, when Pfau and Burgoon (1988) first independently measured threat in their inoculation research, numerous studies have found successful inoculation treatments elicit greater levels of perceived threat relative to control messages (e.g., Ivanov et al, 2009a; Pfau et al, 2009). Thus, consistent with the past two decades of research, we predict subjects in the inoculation group will experience higher levels of threat than subjects in the control group (H2).…”

The Exercise of Power in Communication

“…It stands to reason that highly hedonically relevant freedoms, when threatened or eliminated, should produce extremely high levels of reactance, especially in response to prohibitions targeting substance use and other risk-related behaviours (Miller et al 2006, Miller and Quick 2010. Furthermore, the anger-inducing state of heightened motivation resulting from hedonically relevant proscriptive messages can also generate greater and more highly focused counterarguing activity (Pfau et al 2009).…”

Untangling Threat during Inoculation-Conferred Resistance to Influence

“…In a majority of these studies, the issue of legalizing the sale and use of marijuana was one of two (e.g., Pfau et al, 2004Pfau et al, , 2009 or four (e.g., experimental issues tested, and in each of the studies, the issue topics were collapsed. In some studies, the present issue was paired with the issue of banning the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns , government facilitated restriction of TV violence (Pfau et al, 2004), or it was paired with both issues above mentioned in addition to the issue of gambling legalization .…”