How therapeutic inoculations work needs more attention. Based on the logic of prophylactic inoculations—in medicine and in persuasion—it is likely that therapeutic inoculations take a different route(s) than threat (recognition of an initial attitude’s vulnerability) working with refutational preemption to generate resistance against future attack messages. 

Josh Compton

One of the most significant departures from conventional inoculation theory work is its intentional application for individuals already “inflicted”—that is, inoculation not as a mostly preemptive strategy to protect “healthy” beliefs or attitudes, but instead, to change the attitude across valence. The issue is important for persuasion scholarship in general, as theoretical boundary conditions help at each stage of persuasion research development, serving as a guide for literature review, analysis, synthesis, research design, interpretation, theory building, and so on. It is an important issue for inoculation and resistance to influence scholarship, too, for it gets at the very heart—and name and foundation—of inoculation theory. This essay offers a theoretical analysis of inoculation theory used as both a prophylactic and therapeutic strategy and concludes with a set of recommendations for inoculation theory scholarship moving forward.

Compton, J. (2017, November). Prophylactic versus therapeutic inoculation treatments for resistance to influence [paper presentation]. National Communication Association, Dallas, TX, United States.