4.2. Underlying Mechanisms of the Effect of the Inoculation Intervention
The present study found that perceived threat did not mediate the effect of the inoculation intervention on misinformation discrimination, which is inconsistent with H2. Another study found similar results, as perceived threat induced by inoculation treatments was not significantly correlated with resistance, and this was despite successful resistance generation by the treatments [One possible explanation is that this study used the traditional perceived threat scale developed by Compton and Ivanov [The results of this study suggest that persuasion knowledge mediates the effect of the inoculation intervention on the ability to recognize misinformation, partially supporting Hypothesis (b). This also empirically validates previous claims in the literature that inoculation increases individual persuasion knowledge [