The Psychology of Propaganda

Propaganda is one of the oldest instruments of political power and one of the most psychologically misunderstood. It rarely works by simply “brainwashing” audiences; its influence runs through values, social identity, collective memory, and the narratives people use to make sense of events. This hub gathers peer-reviewed research from advances.in/psychology on how propaganda and state narratives operate, why people accept or resist them, and how psychological “inoculation” can build resistance — spanning wartime Russia, pro-Kremlin disinformation, contested national histories, and extremist recruitment.

What is propaganda?

Propaganda is communication deliberately designed to shape beliefs, attitudes, or behaviour in service of a political or ideological agenda — typically by appealing to emotion, group identity, values, and repetition rather than balanced evidence. Unlike ordinary persuasion, propaganda is systematic, one-sided, and advances the interests of its source. Crucially, its psychological effects depend less on mere exposure than on whether audiences internalise its framing — and research shows internalisation is far from automatic, shaped by people’s values, identities, and the histories they carry.

Featured research

How propaganda and state narratives work

• A Behavior-Change model of jihadi media: The Information-Motivation-Behavioral skills framework and TTP video propaganda
  By Jacob, Mehran, Tong & Lemieux. A qualitative content analysis of 44 Pakistani Taliban videos (2009–2020) that reads propaganda as a behavioural intervention. Videos inform audiences about the group’s vision, motivate through religious duty and community identity, and build perceived capacity to act through repeated exposure to operations rather than instruction. Anti-democratic framing appears in about a quarter of clips and leans on the hypocrisy of democratic states rather than theology.
  
• War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia
  By Ponizovskiy, Weißflog, Osin & Grigoryan. A survey of 973 Russian citizens (August 2022) showing that support for and resistance to the war in Ukraine hinge on how people construe events through core values — not on blanket absorption of the official line — directly testing the assumption that propaganda works by internalisation.
  
• Weaponising the past: An extended SIMCA model for how social identity and collective memory shape collective action responses to democratic backsliding
  By Lavie-Driver & van der Linden. Extends the SIMCA model to explain why responses to democratic backsliding range from mass resistance to indifference or active support, showing how social identity and collective memory — the “weaponising” of history — drive collective action, drawing on Russia, Israel, and the United States.
  
• Race, memory, and colorblindness: Critical history and deconstructing United States democracy
  By Perez, Beam & Small. Draws on critical race theory, cultural psychology, and collective-memory research to show how colorblind ignorance of racist histories shapes perceptions of U.S. democracy as stable and infallible — illuminating how contested national narratives underpin susceptibility to authoritarian rhetoric.
  

Resisting propaganda: inoculation and disinformation defense

• Identity is key, but Inoculation helps — empowering Germans of Russian descent against pro-Kremlin disinformation
  By Ziemer, Schmid, Betsch & Rothmund. A preregistered experiment (N = 597) testing psychological inoculation against pro-Kremlin disinformation in a diaspora community, finding that social identity is decisive but inoculation still adds protection — and that media exposure and identity moderate its effectiveness.
  
• Inoculating against extremist persuasion techniques — a randomised controlled trial in post-conflict Iraq
  By Saleh, Makki, Van der Linden & Roozenbeek. A field RCT (N = 191) in post-conflict regions of Iraq testing whether a short inoculation game, Radicalise, improves vulnerable individuals’ resistance to the manipulation techniques extremist groups use to recruit.
  

Key questions

What is propaganda?

Communication deliberately designed to shape beliefs, attitudes, or behaviour for a political or ideological goal, typically through emotion, identity, values, and repetition rather than balanced evidence.

Does propaganda actually change what people believe?

Not automatically. Regime support is often credited to “effective propaganda,” yet whether state framing is genuinely internalised is rarely tested. Research on 973 Russians during the war in Ukraine shows support and resistance turn on people’s core values, not blanket acceptance. Research on 44 Pakistani Taliban videos adds that extremist propaganda targets not only belief but the viewer’s sense of being able to act, modelling participation through repeated depictions of operations (Jacob et al., 2026).

How does extremist propaganda recruit?

By working on three levels at once. A behavior-change analysis of Pakistani Taliban videos found that they inform viewers who the group and its enemies are, motivate through religious duty and community identity, and build a sense of capability by showing weapons and attacks repeatedly rather than teaching skills. Only one video showed how to make explosives and none called for lone-actor attacks; the videos recruit for the organisation rather than inspire independent violence (Jacob et al., 2026).

How are collective memory and history “weaponised” in propaganda?

Political actors mobilise contested national narratives and selective memories of the past to legitimise present agendas. Research on democratic backsliding shows social identity and collective memory shape whether people resist, ignore, or support such efforts; work on U.S. colorblind history shows how a forgotten racist past can make democracy feel infallible.

Can people be protected against propaganda and disinformation?

Yes — through psychological inoculation (prebunking): briefly exposing people to weakened forms of manipulation so they recognise and resist it later. Randomised trials show inoculation builds resistance to disinformation and extremist persuasion, though social identity strongly shapes how well it works.

How is propaganda different from misinformation and persuasion?

Persuasion seeks to convince; misinformation is false or misleading content (not always intentional); propaganda is the deliberate, organised use of either — emotionally charged and identity-targeted — to serve a political goal.

References

Jacob, S., Mehran, W., Tong, J., & Lemieux, A. (2026). A Behavior-Change model of jihadi media: The Information-Motivation-Behavioral skills framework and TTP video propaganda. advances.in/psychology, 1, e486994. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00071

Lavie-Driver, N. & van der Linden, S. (2026). Weaponising the past: An extended SIMCA model for how social identity and collective memory shape variation in collective action responses to democratic backsliding. advances.in/psychology, 1, e719332. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00055

Perez, M.J., Beam, A.J., & Small, P.A. (2026). Race, memory, and colorblindness: Critical history and deconstructing United States democracy. advances.in/psychology, 1, e316437. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00053

Ponizovskiy, V., Weißflog, M.I., Osin, E., & Grigoryan, L. (2026). War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia. advances.in/psychology, 1, e825539. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00054

Saleh, N., Makki, F., Van der Linden, S., & Roozenbeek, J. (2023). Inoculating against extremist persuasion techniques – Results from a randomised controlled trial in post-conflict areas in Iraq. advances.in/psychology, 1, 1. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00005

Ziemer, C., Schmid, P., Betsch, C., & Rothmund, T. (2024). Identity is key, but Inoculation helps – how to empower Germans of Russian descent against pro-Kremlin disinformation. advances.in/psychology, 2, e628359. https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00015

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