Revisiting the effects of an inoculation treatment on psychological reactance: a conceptual replication and extension with self-report and psychophysiological measures

Abstract

Research published by Richards and Banas and Richards et al. demonstrated that an inoculation treatment given to participants prior to their exposure to a series of freedom-threatening persuasive health messages mitigates audiences’ freedom-threat perceptions, state psychological reactance, and behavioral intentions. We sought to conceptually replicate the studies by Richards and Banas and Richards et al. with a sample of ever-vapers who were either assigned to an inoculation condition or control condition and then exposed to a series of dogmatic anti-vaping messages while psychophysiological responses were recorded. In doing so, we also sought to replicate the pattern of results observed by Clayton et al. and Clayton who used the same stimuli, methods, and measures. The results from our study provided a successful conceptual replication of each of these studies, with a few exceptions that are discussed. This study provides greater confidence in recent psychological reactance findings and the efficacy of an inoculation treatment for circumventing psychological reactance.