This study investigated whether freedom-threat and psychological reactance could be dampened when ever-vapers (i.e., people who have tried vaping) are inoculated with a forewarning of an impending exposure to a series of freedom-threatening anti-vaping Public Service Announcements (PSAs). We also uniquely examined whether these tempered responses could be captured during message exposure using psychophysiological measures of cognitive and emotional processing. A total of 100 college-aged, ever-vapers were recruited and randomly assigned to an inoculation condition or a control (no inoculation treatment) condition. Following the inoculation message or no-inoculation, participants viewed four, 30-second anti-vaping PSAs in random presentation featuring dogmatic, autonomy-threatening language. As expected, participants in the inoculation condition self-reported less freedom-threat, psychological reactance, and unpleasantness in response to the dogmatic anti-vaping PSAs than ever-vapers in the control condition. Psychophysiological responses indicated that ever-vapers in the inoculation condition also had less corrugator activation and greater heart rate deceleration and better recognition memory relative to the control condition. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Clayton, R. B., Compton, J., Reynolds-Tylus, T., Neumann, D., Park, J., Sarra, E., Deshmukh, S., Biangel, R., Hechlik, E., & Sarmiento, H. (2022). Inoculating against psychological reactance: A psychophysiological investigation. National Communication Association, New Orleans, LA, United States. [Top Paper Panel]