Inoculating Against Extremist Persuasion Techniques

Authors Nabil Saleh, Sander van der Linden, Jon Roozenbeek, and BCG’s Fadi Makki conducted a field experiment (N = 191) in post-conflict regions of Iraq to assess the effectiveness of a short inoculation game in improving vulnerable individuals’ resistance against extremist manipulation techniques.

Research found that playing the game significantly improved participants’ ability in spotting manipulative messaging while the improvement in participants' confidence fell just above the traditional 0.05 significance level. However, the research found that playing the game did not impact participants’ ability to identify vulnerable individuals.

Read the study on advances.in