Can Inoculation Work Against the Spiral of Silence? A Study of Public Opinion on the Future of Taiwan

Abstract

This study explores the relationships between inoculation and the spiral of silence theories. Inoculation strategies were employed to mitigate the process of the spiral of silence, especially focusing on resistance to counter-attitudinal attack, attitudinal confidence, willingness to speak out, fear of isolation, and change of attitude. A field experiment was conducted in a two-wave survey of randomly sampled citizens in Taiwan. The issue employed was Taiwan's political future in relation to the People's Republic of China. Results are consistent with major inoculation findings and support the study's core hypotheses: Inoculation treatments enhanced people's resistance to attitude change. People who received an inoculation pre-treatment, as compared with those who did not, became more confident in their attitude over time, more willing to speak out on behalf of one's attitudes, and more likely to overtly resist the counter-attitudinal attempts of others to influence oneself.