Learn it by doing it
Reading about a technique helps a little. Practicing recognition helps more: inoculation research finds that people who actively work through weakened examples of manipulation get measurably better at spotting the real thing, with effects that are modest and fade without refreshers. Two formats here. In the drills you read a fictional message and name what is going on, including when the honest answer is nothing. In the scenarios you sit in the operator's chair in a made-up setting, then see how each move looks from the outside.
Which techniques are in play? Select all that apply, or say there is nothing here. Flagging an honest message counts against you.
Detection is how much of what was there you caught. Precision is how much of what you flagged was really there. A good reader needs both; seeing manipulation everywhere is its own failure. Scores are kept only in this browser.
Basis: Roozenbeek & van der Linden (2019), Palgrave Communications; Basol, Roozenbeek & van der Linden (2020), Journal of Cognition; Maertens et al. (2021), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, on decay and booster sessions. Some later work finds inoculation games can raise skepticism toward true items too, which is why the drills here score false alarms and include honest messages.
All texts and scenarios are fictional. Scenarios never include abuse tactics as playable moves and contain nothing operational. See also the Defense Playbook and the operation anatomies.