Autonomy supportive and reactance supportive inoculations both boost resistance to propaganda, as mediated by state autonomy but not state reactance

We tested two counter-propaganda strategies for boosting peoples’ resistance to extremist propaganda, one based on Self-Determination Theory and one based on Psychological Reactance theory. Caucasian mTurk worker participants (N = 387) were told they would read extremist messages and were randomly assigned to either a neutral control condition, an autonomy-supportive inoculation condition (‘it is your choice to agree or not’), or a...