PERIL is pioneering a groundbreaking approach to countering antisemitism by developing and scientifically validating “psychological inoculation” strategies that prevent harmful ideas from taking root. Rather than merely responding to antisemitism after it spreads, the goal is to build psychological resilience before exposure.
Our 2024 research represents one of the largest studies ever conducted on preventing antisemitism. Using carefully crafted educational videos, we demonstrated the power of helping people recognize and resist manipulation attempts – much like a vaccine helps the body identify and fight off disease. Our rigorous testing with thousands of participants showed remarkable success in building resistance to antisemitic narratives and increasing protective behaviors.
Most importantly, our approach works by enhancing critical thinking and manipulation awareness rather than simple contradiction. This creates broader resistance to harmful ideas and narratives while being highly scalable through media channels – allowing us to reach young people where they are most vulnerable to harmful content.
Current approaches to combating extremist content are largely reactive and inefficient, focusing on moderation and punishment after harmful ideas have already spread. This puts an enormous burden on platforms and on law enforcement while failing to prevent the initial adoption of extremist beliefs.
PERIL takes an evidence-based prevention approach, using rigorous psychological science to stop antisemitic ideas before they spread. We conceptualize extremist content similar to the functions of a virus – spreading rapidly through social networks and flourishing in polarized environments. By understanding these transmission patterns, our research has developed innovative interventions that build both psychological and community resistance, creating sustainable protection against antisemitism in both online and offline spaces.
Our approach mirrors the development of medical vaccines – first identifying emerging threats, then developing targeted protection, and finally delivering it effectively to build both individual and community immunity.
Narrative Identification
Just as medical researchers track emerging virus strains, PERIL uses advanced research methods to identify evolving antisemitic narratives in online spaces. These harmful ideas often represent new mutations of historical antisemitic tropes, emerging in response to current events and social changes. Our systematic monitoring helps us stay ahead of emerging threats.
Inoculation Development
Like vaccine development, our process combines established science with innovative approaches. We create evidence-based video interventions that teach recognition of harmful content before exposure – similar to how vaccines teach the immune system to recognize threats. Our research systematically identifies the most effective components for building psychological resistance, testing different formulations to maximize protection while ensuring safety.
Our latest studies demonstrate that these interventions create measurable psychological defenses that activate automatically when encountering harmful content. Just as vaccines trigger the production of antibodies, our approach helps develop natural psychological protection mechanisms. Rigorous testing shows these effects are both powerful and lasting, with protected individuals showing significantly increased ability to recognize and resist manipulation attempts.
Distribution
Much like public health campaigns that strategically deploy vaccines where they’re most needed, we use sophisticated data analytics to identify optimal distribution channels for our interventions. Through partnerships with leading digital media and community organizations, our evidence-based content reaches target audiences through both online platforms and trusted institutions.
Our research partners collect comprehensive metrics on reach and engagement, such as the organic spread of our inoculation’s protective effects through social networks. Like tracking how vaccine immunity spreads through communities, we analyze how psychological resistance naturally diffuses from person to person. This multiplier effect significantly enhances cost-effectiveness similar to herd immunity: each directly inoculated individual has potential to help protect others in their social networks and environments. We use these insights to continuously refine our approach, optimizing for maximum sustainable impact.
Continuing Research
Building on our successful development and distribution approaches, our research program is expanding in several exciting directions:
Building Community Resistance
Just like preventing the spread of a physical virus is a community-wide effort, so is the preventing the spread of extremist ideas. PERIL develops, tests, and disseminates resources, guides, and workshop trainings for parents, caregivers, teachers, coaches, religious leaders, mental health professionals, and other trusted adults in the lives of youth to help identify and address extremism and radicalization among youth. Building concentric circles of social support and resilience among communities helps build ‘herd immunity’ and group behaviors that prevent the spread of viral extremist ideas.
In response to the surge of antisemitic rhetoric following October 7th, 2023, PERIL launched a major research initiative testing novel approaches to prevent the spread of harmful antisemitic narratives online. Our groundbreaking study of nearly 5,000 participants demonstrated that carefully designed video interventions can effectively ‘inoculate’ young adults against online manipulation attempts and antisemitic tropes before exposure.
Key Results from our most effective inoculation:
The Science Behind the Success: Our approach leverages the same biological principles that make vaccines effective against viruses. Just as physical vaccines create antibodies, our evidence-based interventions help develop “psychological antibodies” – automatic protective responses that activate when encountering harmful content. This creates sustained resistance through multiple reinforcing mechanisms:
This research positions us to develop increasingly powerful and sustainable solutions to combat antisemitism at scale, protecting entire communities more efficiently than ever before.
Our psychological inoculation approach offers unique advantages over traditional reactive interventions:
Scalable Impact
Natural Amplification
Research shows up to 20-30% of inoculated individuals naturally share their insights with others, creating an organic spread of protection through social networks. This “psychological antibody” network effect means:
Cost-Effective Prevention
This proactive approach offers substantial return on investment by preventing harmful narrative adoption before it requires resource-intensive intervention, while naturally expanding protection through social networks.
Project
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