Political propaganda mostly reinforces existing preferences rather than altering them.

Evidence

Four decades ago, spurred by the cancer of fascism abroad and the wide reach of radio at home, American social scientists inaugurated the study of what was expected to be the sinister workings of propaganda in a free society. What they found surprised them. Instead of a people easily led astray, they discovered a people that seemed quite immune to political persuasion. The “minimal effects” reported by Hovland and Lazarsfeld did much to dispel naive apprehensions of a gullible public (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944; Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949). Moreover, later research on persuasion drove home the point repeatedly: propaganda reinforces the public’s preferences; seldom does it alter them (e.g., Katz & Feldman, 1962; Patterson & McClure, 1976; Sears & Chaffee, 1978). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1440

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the modern ‘minimal effects’ debate revisited in the digital age and to the current misinformation/echo-chamber literature.
• SEED: An essay angle: the ‘minimal effects’ consensus versus the modern panic over disinformation and social media echo chambers, and what the gap between them means.