Sander van der Linden
Van der Linden in 2019
NationalityDutch
Alma materLondon School of Economics and Political Science
Known forGateway belief model, Bad News (video game)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisThe social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, intentions and behaviours: a national study (2014)

Sander L. van der Linden is a Dutch social psychologist and author who is a professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge. He studies the psychology of social influence, risk, human judgment, and decision-making. He is particularly known for his research on the psychology of social issues, such as fake news,[1] COVID-19,[2] and climate change.[3]

He has written books for general audiences, including Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity, which is about the psychology of misinformation and fake news.

Education

Van der Linden completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the department of psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science[4] in 2014 with a thesis titled "The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, intentions and behaviours: a national study",[5] and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Amsterdam and California State University, Chico.[6]

Career

Van der Linden is a professor of social psychology in society in the department of psychology at the University of Cambridge, England where he has directed the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory since 2016.[7] He is also a fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, a research affiliate of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University and the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge.[4]

He serves on the editorial board of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Personality and Individual Differences, Current Research in Social and Ecological Psychology, and the Journal of Risk Research.[8][9][10][11]

He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology from 2018 to 2021.[12]

Research contributions

Misinformation

Van der Linden is most well-known for his research program that looks at how to protect people from fake news and misinformation.[13][14] The research draws on inoculation theory where, following the biomedical analogy, forewarning people and exposing them to a severely weakened dose of fake news can generate psychological resistance against it.[15][16][17][18]

He is known for co-developing the fake news game Bad News,[19][20] which simulates a social media feed and teaches people about the manipulation techniques used in the production of fake news. A more recent version of the game called GoViral![21] aims to inoculate against misinformation about COVID-19 specifically.

Gateway belief model

Van der Linden is known for the Gateway belief model (GBM),[22] a dual-process theory of reasoning. The model postulates a two-step process of attitude change. In the first step, perceptions of agreement among a group of influential referents (e.g. experts) influence key private attitudes that people may hold about an issue (e.g., that global warming is human-caused). In turn, these central cognitive and affective beliefs are hypothesized to shape public attitudes and support for science.[23] In other words, the model suggests that what underpins people's attitudes toward (often contested) science is their perception of a scientific consensus. Correcting people's (mis)perception of scientific agreement on an issue is therefore regarded as a "gateway" cognition[23] to eliciting subsequent changes in related beliefs that people hold about contested social and scientific issues.[24]

With the consensus heuristic as the primary mechanism for initiating the attitude change, the model finds its theoretical roots in other prominent social psychological theories such as the heuristic-systematic model and the Elaboration Likelihood Model.[24] The model has been applied in a variety of contexts, including climate change,[25][26] vaccination,[27] the Brexit debate,[28] and GMOs.[29] One analysis from Skeptical Science of 37 published papers notes that about 86% of them support the broad tenets of the GBM.[30]

Conspiracy theories

Van der Linden and others have surveyed more than 5,000 Americans online about their political preferences, asking them to respond to questions developed to measure conspiratorial thinking and paranoia. They found that those at the extremes of the political spectrum were more conspiratorial than those in the middle. Researchers also found that conservatives were more prone to conspiracy thinking than liberals. Van der Linden speculates that this may reflect strong identification with conservative groups and values, and attempts to manage uncertainty.[31]

Honours and recognition

David Robson of The Guardian wrote that van der Linden pioneered research into understanding and dealing with the spread of misinformation.[32]

In 2021, he was designated an ISI Highly Cited Researcher.

Bibliography

Books

  • FOOLPROOF: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity (HarperCollins), 2023. ISBN 9780008466718
  • Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society (Earthscan Risk in Society), 2019. ISBN 978-0367235437

References

  1. ↑ "Could this be the cure for fake news?". BBC. Retrieved 7 March 2019.
  2. ↑ "Tackling COVID-19 Dr Sander van der Linden". University of Cambridge. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  3. ↑ "How Psychology can Save the World from Climate Change". NPR. Retrieved 7 March 2019.
  4. 1 2 "Sander van der Linden's Cambridge University Department Page". 6 September 2016. Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  5. ↑ van der Linden, Sander (2014). The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, intentions and behaviours: a national study (PhD). London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
  6. ↑ "Sander van der Linden". Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  7. ↑ "Department Welcomes Dr. van der Linden". Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  8. ↑ Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. APA. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  9. ↑ "Personality and Individual Differences". Elsevier. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  10. ↑ "Journal of Risk Research". Taylor & Francis. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
  11. ↑ "Current Research in Social and Ecological Psychology". Elsevier. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
  12. ↑ "Journal of Environmental Psychology". Elsevier. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  13. ↑ Ortiz, Diego (2018). "Could this be the cure for fake news?". BBC Future.
  14. ↑ Robson, David (2020). "Vaccinating against viruses of the mind". British Psychological Association.
  15. ↑ van der Linden, Sander (2023). Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity. London, UK: 4th Estate/HarperCollins. p. 336. ISBN 9780008466718.
  16. ↑ van der Linden, Sander; Leiserowitz, Anthony; Rosenthal, Seth; Maibach, Edward (2017). "Inoculating the public against misinformation about climate change". Global Challenges. 1 (2): 1600008: 1–7. doi:10.1002/gch2.201600008. PMC 6607159. PMID 31565263.
  17. ↑ Maertens, R; Roozenbeek, J; Basol, M; van der Linden, S (2020). "Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. 27 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1037/xap0000315. ISSN 1076-898X. PMID 33017160. S2CID 222148288.
  18. ↑ Roozenbeek, J; van der Linden, S (2019). "Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation". Palgrave Communications. 5 (65). doi:10.1057/s41599-019-0279-9. S2CID 195329457.
  19. ↑ Gold, Hadas (2020). "Researchers have created a 'vaccine' for fake news. It's a game". CNN.
  20. ↑ van der Linden, Sander (2023). Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity. London, UK: 4th Estate/HarperCollins. p. 336. ISBN 9780008466718.
  21. ↑ Reader, Ruth (2020). "This game can stop people from falling for COVID-19 conspiracies". Fast Company.
  22. ↑ van der Linden, Sander; Leiserowitz, Anthony; Feinberg, Geoffrey; Maibach, Edward (2015). "The Scientific Consensus on Human-Caused Climate Change as a Gateway Belief: Experimental Evidence". PLOS ONE. 10 (2): e0118489. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118489. PMC 4340922. PMID 25714347.
  23. 1 2 Mooney, Chris (2015). "Researchers think they've found a "gateway belief" that leads to greater science acceptance". The Washington Post.
  24. 1 2 van der Linden, Sander; Maibach, Edward; Leiserowitz, Anthony (2020). "The gateway belief model: A large-scale replication". Journal of Environmental Psychology. 62: 49–58. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.01.009. S2CID 151033547.
  25. ↑ van der Linden, S; Leiserowitz, A; Maibach, E (2017). "Scientific agreement can neutralize politicization of facts". Nature Human Behaviour. 2 (1): 2–3. doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0259-2. PMID 30980051. S2CID 3287707.
  26. ↑ Kerr, Marc; Wilson, John (2018). "Changes in perceived scientific consensus shift beliefs about climate change and GM food safety". PLOS ONE. 13 (7): e0200295. Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1300295K. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0200295. PMC 6034897. PMID 29979762.
  27. ↑ Hotchkiss, Michael (2015). "Emphasizing consensus about safety boosts support for vaccines". Princeton University News.
  28. ↑ Harris, Adam; Sildmäe, Oliver; Speekenbrink, Maarten; Hahn, Ulrike (2020). "The potential power of experience in communications of expert consensus levels" (PDF). Journal of Risk Research. 22 (5): 593–609. doi:10.1080/13669877.2018.1440416. S2CID 148609227.
  29. ↑ Dixon, Graham (2018). "Applying the Gateway Belief Model to Genetically Modified Food Perceptions: New Insights and Additional Questions". Journal of Communication. 66 (6): 888–908. doi:10.1111/jcom.12260.
  30. ↑ Cook, John (2020). "The Consensus on Consensus Messaging". Skeptical Science.
  31. ↑ Miller, Greg (14 January 2021). "The enduring allure of conspiracies". Knowable Magazine. doi:10.1146/knowable-011421-2. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  32. ↑ Robson, David, "It's only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist", The Guardian. November 29, 2020.
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