Inoculation Theory This Is Considered

Inoculation Theory

This is considered a social psychology theory that goes a long way to show how people reinforce their attitude as well as their beliefs so as to be able to maintain them in the long run. It was a concept that was developed by William J. McGuire in the 1960s (John Briggs, 2012). This was after the Korean War where it was observed that most of the captives opted to willingly remain with their captors rather than returning home. This was due to the brainwashing they were subjected to hence the interest in studying this grew with time so as to avoid such in the future.

This theory technically involves subjecting the recipient to anticipated news or information and forwarding counterarguments that are weak so that the people can start forming counterarguments against the information to come. It works more like the medical vaccination, the theory works by subjecting the target people to the mild version of the threat. This means that when the actual threat will be introduced it will find the persons already prepared with rebuttals hence shake them less.

McGuire went a notch higher than merely exposing the people to the counterarguments but indicated that introducing some fear factor or having something at stake would easily propel them to respond to the arguments that will follow. The risk factor will make people strengthen their beliefs and attitude towards a given issue.

This is a method that'd used by many public leaders either knowingly or unknowingly while making public speeches especially in context where political standpoints are involved. The most recent was when President Obama was addressing the UN General Assembly in September, he tackled a wide spectrum of issues and chief among them was the threat of Iran arming herself with the nuclear weapon. In his speech, Obama knew very well that the president of Iran was to deliver his speech way after he has given his and would attempt to indicate the reasons why Iran should have nuclear weapons, so Obama preempted that to the world in the following excerpt of his speech sourced from the Guardian, (2012):