{"id":10470,"date":"2026-06-19T16:12:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/?post_type=knowledge_hub&#038;p=10470"},"modified":"2026-06-19T16:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:15:08","slug":"psychology-of-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"knowledge_hub","link":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/knowledge-hub\/psychology-of-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"The Psychology of Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Propaganda is one of the oldest instruments of political power and one of the most psychologically misunderstood. It rarely works by simply \u201cbrainwashing\u201d audiences; its influence runs through <strong>values, social identity, collective memory, and the narratives people use to make sense of events<\/strong>. This hub gathers peer-reviewed research from <em>advances.in\/psychology<\/em> on how propaganda and state narratives operate, why people accept or resist them, and how psychological \u201cinoculation\u201d can build resistance \u2014 spanning wartime Russia, pro-Kremlin disinformation, contested national histories, and extremist recruitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is propaganda?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Propaganda is communication deliberately designed to shape beliefs, attitudes, or behaviour in service of a political or ideological agenda \u2014 typically by appealing to emotion, group identity, values, and repetition rather than balanced evidence.<\/strong> 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 <em>internalise<\/em> its framing \u2014 and research shows internalisation is far from automatic, shaped by people\u2019s values, identities, and the histories they carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Featured research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How propaganda and state narratives work<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"cnvs-block-core-list-item-1781877476814\"><a href=\"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/aip00054\/\"><strong>War, what is it good for? Propaganda, value-instantiating beliefs, war support and resistance in Russia<\/strong><\/a><br><em>By Ponizovskiy, Wei\u00dfflog, Osin &amp; Grigoryan.<\/em> 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 \u2014 not on blanket absorption of the official line \u2014 directly testing the assumption that propaganda works by internalisation.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"cnvs-block-core-list-item-1781877476816\"><a href=\"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/aip00055\/\"><strong>Weaponising the past: An extended SIMCA model for how social identity and collective memory shape collective action responses to democratic backsliding<\/strong><\/a><br><em>By Lavie-Driver &amp; van der Linden.<\/em> 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 \u2014 the \u201cweaponising\u201d of history \u2014 drive collective action, drawing on Russia, Israel, and the United States.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/aip00053\/\"><strong>Race, memory, and colorblindness: Critical history and deconstructing United States democracy<\/strong><\/a><br><em>By Perez, Beam &amp; Small.<\/em> 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 \u2014 illuminating how contested national narratives underpin susceptibility to authoritarian rhetoric.<br><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Resisting propaganda: inoculation and disinformation defense<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"cnvs-block-core-list-item-1781877476821\"><a href=\"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/aip00015\/\"><strong>Identity is key, but Inoculation helps \u2014 empowering Germans of Russian descent against pro-Kremlin disinformation<\/strong><\/a><br><em>By Ziemer, Schmid, Betsch &amp; Rothmund.<\/em> A preregistered experiment (<em>N<\/em>&nbsp;=&nbsp;597) testing psychological inoculation against pro-Kremlin disinformation in a diaspora community, finding that social identity is decisive but inoculation still adds protection \u2014 and that media exposure and identity moderate its effectiveness.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"cnvs-block-core-list-item-1781877476823\"><a href=\"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/aip00005\/\"><strong>Inoculating against extremist persuasion techniques \u2014 a randomised controlled trial in post-conflict Iraq<\/strong><\/a><br><em>By Saleh, Makki, Van der Linden &amp; Roozenbeek.<\/em> A field RCT (<em>N<\/em>&nbsp;=&nbsp;191) in post-conflict regions of Iraq testing whether a short inoculation game, <em>Radicalise<\/em>, improves vulnerable individuals\u2019 resistance to the manipulation techniques extremist groups use to recruit.<br><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Key questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is propaganda?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Does propaganda actually change what people believe?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not automatically. Regime support is often credited to \u201ceffective propaganda,\u201d 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\u2019s core values, not blanket acceptance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How are collective memory and history \u201cweaponised\u201d in propaganda?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Can people be protected against propaganda and disinformation?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes \u2014 through <strong>psychological inoculation (prebunking)<\/strong>: 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How is propaganda different from misinformation and persuasion?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Persuasion seeks to convince; misinformation is false or misleading content (not always intentional); propaganda is the deliberate, organised use of either \u2014 emotionally charged and identity-targeted \u2014 to serve a political goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Related research hubs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Psychology of <a href=\"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/knowledge-hub\/psychology-of-misinformation\/\">Misinformation<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/10.56296\/knowledge-hub\/psychology-democratic-backsliding\/\">Democratic Backsliding<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Propaganda is one of the oldest instruments of political power and one of the most psychologically misunderstood. It&hellip;\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10472,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10470","knowledge_hub","type-knowledge_hub","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/knowledge_hub\/10470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/knowledge_hub"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/knowledge_hub"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/knowledge_hub\/10470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10478,"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/knowledge_hub\/10470\/revisions\/10478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advances.in\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}