Inoculation Theory
In the early 1960, William McGuire began to build the theory of inoculation in and around communication and persuasion.
The theory has since been studied extensively with nuances offered (a large debt to Michael Pfau).
The communication theory uses a metaphor from biology that is especially relevant with COVID as the topic of the day.
A person or entity can expose individuals to a weakened argument (line of attack) and by doing so can “inoculate” the individuals exposed to future, potentially more robust attacks.
The theory is not without detractors, and some researchers have dismissed the theory all together.
However, research continues and the field, like all social science, continues to develop.
In the political context, we often come across the theory when dealing with negative information we have found out about our own client and are wrestling with how to deal with a potential line(s) of attack.
A Brief Note About Negative Campaigning
It works.
A Brief Note About Opposition Research
It will be found.
Inoculation in a Political Context
We have established that negative campaigning works and that a good opposition research investigation will uncover your deep secrets. If they aren’t uncovered by a researcher, your secrets will be likely hand-delivered by a jilted ex or an upset past acquaintance that does not share your politics. (Trust me on all of this).
We have learned from experience, you must “hang a lantern” on your issues and by doing so inoculate yourself.
Inoculation in Politics
The theory works like this, I hang a lantern on my problem and I attack my own campaign. In this case, I am open about my problem, but most importantly I tell you!
Critical to this is the individual must perceive a threat.
How do we do this?
“My opponent is going to attack me (or our campaign, our movement) by saying…..”
I then work to pre-empt their argument or refute it. I simply give the audience the ammunition to refute and / or build additional refutations.
By doing so I am weakening the “shock” and the effectiveness, but more importantly I am inviting you to generate counter arguments or I am providing you the counter arguments.
This is extremely effective when the attack is likely to come from the other party in the hyper-polarized times. Why? The threat appears greater and often the audience is then more motivated to generate counter arguments.
Research On Inoculation
I am going to point you to two studies.
The first is one of my go to research tactics – look for a meta study on your topic. Meta-studies are fantastic – they are a review and summation of available research on a topic. If you can find a good, recent one, you’ll save a lot of time AND have a fantastic reference sheet for further study.
In this case, we have a meta-analysis done by Banas & Rains in 2010. It offers a much better in-depth coverage of the nuance in the field than I can offer in this post.
It concludes while there is counter-findings in the field, a review of the available research finds “inoculation treatments are more effective than no-treatment controls or supportive treatments in fostering resistance to attitude change. “
The second study is an older study (1990), but I include it because it is specific towards campaigns.
Michael Pfau, et al look at inoculations via direct mail in the 1988 presidential campaign. Dukakis v GH Bush. In my kind of experiment (and to be fair), the researchers attacked both candidates. The Bush messages attacked Dukakis for being weak on crime, and the Dukakis messages attacked Bush for support of agriculture policies and policies that hurt rural America. (A criticism is these lines of attack appear almost cute or quaint in the current times, but that is an issue for another day. Another criticism is the study is a relative low sample study and likely due for a replication study using a larger sample.)
In short, they find inoculation to outperform post-hoc refutation – and the experiment was conducted via direct mail. This finding was robust among strong party identifiers.