Sander Van Der Linden
Biographic Data
| ID | 382929 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sander Van Der Linden |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sander |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Der Linden |
| SIGNATURE | VAN DER LINDEN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0269-1744 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 92 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 747 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 91 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
A registered report megastudy on the persuasiveness of the most-cited climate messages
Consensus Messaging Shifts Beliefs About Climate Change in a Field Experiment
Previous research on climate change consensus messaging has mostly taken place in controlled lab settings. In this field experiment, we engaged U.S. residents ( N = 158) in brief doorstep conversations on climate change. Research assistants read a script about the scientific consensus (treatment) or basic facts about climate change (control) and then provided participants with a magnet containing the same information. The consensus message had a …
A megastudy of behavioral interventions to catalyze public, political, and financial climate advocacy
Addressing climate change depends on large-scale system changes, which require public advocacy. Here, we identified and tested 17 expert-crowdsourced theory-informed behavioral interventions designed to promote public, political, and financial advocacy in a large quota-matched sample of US residents (n = 31,324). The most consistently effective intervention emphasized both the collective efficacy and emotional benefits of climate action, increasi…
Agency and values for transformative change
Understanding HIV Vaccine Misinformation and Vaccine Intentions Among Young Women in South Africa: Insights from an Online Survey
An effective HIV vaccine could significantly reduce HIV incidence, but demand for future HIV vaccines will be affected by misinformation. We conducted an online survey (March-April 2024) to identify the misinformation claims most likely to deter young women in South Africa (n = 188) from receiving an HIV vaccine. Participants rated HIV-vaccine misinformation as most concerning (i.e. would make them not want to get vaccinated) and least concerning…
Misinformation is both a symptom and a cause: Reply to Altay and Mercier (2026)
In their commentary, Altay and Mercier (2026) frame misinformation as a mere symptom of deeper underlying societal problems. Here, we highlight a more nuanced causal account involving reciprocal effects, where misinformation can act as a cause of societal issues, which in turn can simultaneously act as a cause of misinformation belief. When it comes to the total causal impact of misinformation, we note the importance of taking into account not on…
The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Violent Extremism
Psychology, with its dedication to understanding human behavior and its complexities, is a key part in comprehending the underpinnings of violent extremism. This comprehensive resource encompasses all major psychological frameworks related to violent extremism, making it essential reading for scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and students determined to enact positive change in this critical area. This handbook provides a state-of-the-art ove…
Social Psychological Perspectives on Political Polarization: Insights and Implications for Climate Change
Political polarization is a barrier to enacting policy solutions to global issues. Social psychology has a rich history of studying polarization, and there is an important opportunity to define and refine its contributions to the present political realities. We do so in the context of one of the most pressing modern issues: climate change. We synthesize the literature on political polarization and its applications to climate change, and we propos…
Bad News in the civics classroom: How serious gameplay fosters teenagers’ ability to discern misinformation techniques
Although the serious game Bad News has been used to inoculate citizens against misinformation, it has not been formally evaluated in traditional classrooms. We therefore evaluated its impact on 516 upper-secondary Swedish students playing individually, paired, or with the whole class. Results show that students improved their ability to discern manipulation techniques in social media posts. Students with prior positive attitudes to credible news …
Q&A with Sander van der Linden: Trust in science
Using psychological science to understand and fight health misinformation: An APA consensus statement
There is widespread concern that misinformation poses dangerous risks to health, well-being, and civic life. Despite a growing body of research on the topic, significant questions remain about the psychological factors that render people susceptible to misinformation, the extent to which it affects real-world behavior, how it spreads online and offline, and intervention strategies that counter and correct misinformation effectively. This report r…
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries: Global Evidence on How People Encounter and Engage with Information about Science
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
The gateway (mis)belief model: How misinformation impacts perceptions of scientific consensus and attitudes towards climate change
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to humanity, necessitating immediate action to combat its consequences. Although there is a nearly unanimous scientific consensus that climate change is human‐caused, misinformation doubting its causes continues to circulate widely. In this study, we test the Gateway (mis)Belief Model (GmBM) which assumes that misinformation affects perceived scientific consensus negatively, which then cascades down t…
Norm-enhanced prebunking for actively open-minded thinking indirectly improves misinformation discernment and reduces conspiracy beliefs
Tune in to the prebunking network! Development and validation of six inoculation videos that prebunk manipulation tactics and logical fallacies in misinformation
Meta‐analyses have demonstrated how inoculation interventions increase the detection of misinformation, but their scalability has remained elusive. To address this, Study 1 (pre‐registered; N = 1,583) tested the efficacy of three short inoculation videos (prebunks) against three common manipulation tactics used in misinformation: (1) polarization, (2) conspiracy theories, and (3) fake experts. Results indicated that all three inoculation videos (…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
The impact of generative artificial intelligence on socioeconomic inequalities and policy making
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to both exacerbate and ameliorate existing socioeconomic inequalities. In this article, we provide a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary overview of the potential impacts of generative AI on (mis)information and three information-intensive domains: work, education, and healthcare. Our goal is to highlight how generative AI could worsen existing inequalities while illuminating how AI may hel…
Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Liars know they are lying: Differentiating disinformation from disagreement
Mis- and disinformation pose substantial societal challenges, and have thus become the focus of a substantive field of research. However, the field of misinformation research has recently come under scrutiny on two fronts. First, a political response has emerged, claiming that misinformation research aims to censor conservative voices. Second, some scholars have questioned the utility of misinformation research altogether, arguing that misinforma…
The Psychology of Misinformation
King Charles III is Dracula's distant cousin. Governments are hiding information about UFOs. COVID-19 came from outer space. These sound like absurd statements, but some are true, and others are misinformation. But what exactly is misinformation? Who believes and spreads things that aren't true, and why? What solutions do we have available, and how well do they work? This book answers all these questions and more. Tackling the science of misinfor…
Chilling results: How explicit warm glow appeals fail to boost pro-environmental behaviour
We conducted a large-scale online experiment to examine whether climate change messaging can induce emotions and motivate pro-environmental action. We study how exposure to explicit positive (‘warm glow’) and negative (‘cold prickle’) emotional appeals as well as a traditional social norm communication affects pro-environmental action. We find that a simple call to take action to mitigate climate change is at least as affective as social norm mes…
Predicting misinformation beliefs across four countries: The role of narcissism, conspiracy mentality, social trust, and perceptions of unsafe neighborhoods
There are differing perspectives on the roles that social-perceptual and individual-difference factors play in explaining susceptibility to misinformation. With quota-representative samples from the U.S. ( n = 492), the U.K. ( n = 600), Poland ( n = 558), and Germany ( n = 490), we ran a comprehensive test of four social-perceptual factors (i.e., social trust, institutional trust, relative deprivation, and perceived area unsafety) and six individ…
Why misinformation must not be ignored
Recent academic debate has seen the emergence of the claim that misinformation is not a significant societal problem. We argue that the arguments used to support this minimizing position are flawed, particularly if interpreted (e.g., by policymakers or the public) as suggesting that misinformation can be safely ignored. Here, we rebut the two main claims, namely that misinformation is not of substantive concern (a) due to its low incidence and (b…
Predicting the replicability of social and behavioural science claims in Covid-19 preprints
Replications are important for assessing the reliability of published findings. However, they are costly, and it is infeasible to replicate everything. Accurate, fast, lower-cost alternatives such as eliciting predictions could accelerate assessment for rapid policy implementation in a crisis and help guide a more efficient allocation of scarce replication resources. We elicited judgements from participants on 100 claims from preprints about an e…
Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation
Using social and behavioural science to support Covid-19 pandemic response
Risk perceptions of Covid-19 around the world
The World Health Organization has declared the rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world a global public health emergency. It is well-known that the spread of the disease is influenced by people’s willingness to adopt preventative public health behaviors, which are often associated with public risk perception. In this study, we present the first assessment of public risk perception of COVID-19 around the world using national samples (total N = 6,…
The Paranoid Style in American Politics Revisited: An Ideological Asymmetry in Conspiratorial Thinking
It is often claimed that conspiracy theories are endorsed with the same level of intensity across the left-right ideological spectrum. But do liberals and conservatives in the United States embrace conspiratorial thinking to an equivalent degree? There are important historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons dating back to Richard Hofstadter's book The Paranoid Style in American Politics to doubt this claim. In four large studies of U.S. a…
The fake news game: Actively inoculating against the risk of misinformation
The rapid spread of online misinformation poses an increasing risk to societies worldwide. To help counter this, we developed a ‘fake news game’ in which participants are actively tasked with creating a news article about a strongly politicized issue (the European refugee crisis) using misleading tactics, from the perspective of different types of fake news producers. To pilot test the efficacy of the game, we conducted a randomized field study (…
Science skepticism in times of Covid-19
In the current paper, we argue that to get a better understanding of the psychological antecedents of COVID-related science skepticism, it is pivotal to review what is known about the (social) psychology of science skepticism. Recent research highlighting the role of ideologies and worldviews in shaping science skepticism can inform research questions as well as pandemic responses to COVID-19. It is likely that the antecedents of general COVID-19…
You are fake news: Political bias in perceptions of fake news
Although the rise of fake news is posing an increasing threat to societies worldwide, little is known about what associations the term ‘fake news’ activates in the public mind. Here, we report a psychological bias that we describe as the ‘fake news effect’: the tendency for partisans to use the term ‘fake news’ to discount and discredit ideologically uncongenial media sources. In a national sample of the US population ( N = 1000), we elicited top…
Covid-19 risk perception: A longitudinal analysis of its predictors and associations with health protective behaviours in the United Kingdom
In this study, we present results from five cross-sectional surveys on public risk perception of COVID-19 and its association with health protective behaviours in the UK over a 10-month period (March 2020 to January 2021). Samples were nationally balanced on age, gender, and ethnicity (total N = 6,281). We find that although risk perception varies between the time points surveyed, it is consistently, significantly, and positively correlated with …
Towards psychological herd immunity: Cross-cultural evidence for two prebunking interventions against Covid-19 misinformation
Misinformation about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a pressing societal challenge. Across two studies, one preregistered ( n1 = 1771 and n2 = 1777), we assess the efficacy of two 'prebunking' interventions aimed at improving people's ability to spot manipulation techniques commonly used in COVID-19 misinformation across three different languages (English, French and German). We find that Go Viral!, a novel five-minute browser game, (a) incre…
Scientific agreement can neutralize politicization of facts
Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation
The language of conspiracy: A psychological analysis of speech used by conspiracy theorists and their followers on Twitter
This paper analyzes key psychological themes in language used by prominent conspiracy theorists and science advocates on Twitter, as well as those of a random sample of their follower base. We conducted a variety of psycholinguistic analyses over a corpus of 16,290 influencer tweets and 160,949 follower tweets in order to evaluate stable intergroup differences in language use among those who subscribe or are exposed to conspiratorial content and …
On the relationship between personal experience, affect and risk perception: The case of climate change
Examining the conceptual relationship between personal experience, affect, and risk perception is crucial in improving our understanding of how emotional and cognitive process mechanisms shape public perceptions of climate change. This study is the first to investigate the interrelated nature of these variables by contrasting three prominent social‐psychological theories. In the first model, affect is viewed as a fast and associative information …
Psychological Inoculation against Misinformation: Current Evidence and Future Directions
Much like a viral contagion, misinformation can spread rapidly from one individual to another. Inoculation theory offers a logical basis for developing a psychological "vaccine" against misinformation. We discuss the origins of inoculation theory, starting with its roots in the 1960s as a "vaccine for brainwash," and detail the major theoretical and practical innovations that inoculation research has witnessed over the years. Specifically, we rev…
Replicating patterns of prospect theory for decision under risk
Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information
The extent to which belief in (mis)information reflects lack of knowledge versus a lack of motivation to be accurate is unclear. Here, across four experiments (n = 3,364), we motivated US participants to be accurate by providing financial incentives for correct responses about the veracity of true and false political news headlines. Financial incentives improved accuracy and reduced partisan bias in judgements of headlines by about 30%, primarily…
The future of behavioral insights: On the importance of socially situated nudges
Socially minded nudges are the more sociable cousin of regular nudges: they reveal important information about other people's behavior, raise normative expectations about what is desirable, can be shared and transmitted online or offline and leverage social incentives and sanctions that regulate individual and group behavior. In this article, I argue that many of the most successful nudges – that is, nudges that have been well replicated, offer p…
Detecting local environmental change: The role of experience in shaping risk judgments about global warming
Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events (e.g. flooding, heat waves, and wildfires). As a result, it is often reasoned that as more individuals experience unusual weather patterns that are consistent with changing climate conditions, the more their concern about global warming will increase, and the more motivated they will become to respond and address the problem effectively. Social science…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
A Conceptual Critique of the Cultural Cognition Thesis
I offer a critique of the cultural cognition thesis. I argue that cultural cognition is not a theory about culture or cognition per se; rather, it is a thesis that aims to explain why specific American groups with opposing political views disagree over a select number of contemporary science issues. I highlight that cultural cognition can be characterized as a “strange loop” as it frequently defines its core theoretical properties (e.g., group, c…
Biodiversity conservation as a promising frontier for behavioural science
The Experience of Consensus: Video as an Effective Medium to Communicate Scientific Agreement on Climate Change
Research on the gateway belief model indicates that communicating the scientific consensus on global warming acts as a “gateway” to other beliefs and support for action. We test whether a video conveying the scientific consensus on global warming is more effective than a text transcript with the same information. Results show that the video was significantly more effective than the transcript in increasing people’s perception of scientific agreem…
Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-cost sustainable behaviour
Why misinformation must not be ignored
Recent academic debate has seen the emergence of the claim that misinformation is not a significant societal problem. We argue that the arguments used to support this minimizing position are flawed, particularly if interpreted (e.g., by policymakers or the public) as suggesting that misinformation can be safely ignored. Here, we rebut the two main claims, namely that misinformation is not of substantive concern (a) due to its low incidence and (b…
Climate change threats increase modern racism as a function of social dominance orientation and ingroup identification
The nature of viral altruism and how to make it stick
The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions: Towards a comprehensive model
On the relationship between personal experience, affect and risk perception: The case of climate change
Examining the conceptual relationship between personal experience, affect, and risk perception is crucial in improving our understanding of how emotional and cognitive process mechanisms shape public perceptions of climate change. This study is the first to investigate the interrelated nature of these variables by contrasting three prominent social‐psychological theories. In the first model, affect is viewed as a fast and associative information …
Improving Public Engagement With Climate Change: Five “Best Practice” Insights From Psychological Science
Despite being one of the most important societal challenges of the 21st century, public engagement with climate change currently remains low in the United States. Mounting evidence from across the behavioral sciences has found that most people regard climate change as a nonurgent and psychologically distant risk-spatially, temporally, and socially-which has led to deferred public decision making about mitigation and adaptation responses. In this …
Highlighting consensus among medical scientists increases public support for vaccines: Evidence from a randomized experiment
These findings suggest that emphasizing the medical consensus about (childhood) vaccine safety is likely to be an effective pro-vaccine message that could help prevent current immunization rates from declining. We recommend that clinicians and public health officials highlight and communicate the high degree of medical consensus on (childhood) vaccine safety when possible
The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours: A national study
The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours: a national study." Environmental Education Research, 22(3), pp. 434–435
No time for smokescreen skepticism: A rejoinder to Shani and Arad
Denying bogus skepticism in climate change and tourism research
The importance of assessing and communicating scientific consensus
The spread of influential misinformation, such as conspiracy theories about the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program (SLAP), is contributing to the politicization of science. In an important recent study, Shearer et al (2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 084011 ) employ a novel methodology to quantify the expert consensus of popular SLAP assertions. The authors find that 99% (76/77) of surveyed experts have not encountered any…
A Conceptual Critique of the Cultural Cognition Thesis
I offer a critique of the cultural cognition thesis. I argue that cultural cognition is not a theory about culture or cognition per se; rather, it is a thesis that aims to explain why specific American groups with opposing political views disagree over a select number of contemporary science issues. I highlight that cultural cognition can be characterized as a “strange loop” as it frequently defines its core theoretical properties (e.g., group, c…
The nature of viral altruism and how to make it stick
Scientific agreement can neutralize politicization of facts
Ideological asymmetries in conformity, desire for shared reality, and the spread of misinformation
Global Warming’s “Six Americas Short Survey”: Audience Segmentation of Climate Change Views Using a Four Question Instrument
Audience segmentation has long been used in marketing, public health, and communication, and is now becoming an important tool in the environmental domain as well. Global Warming's Six Americas is a well-established segmentation of Americans based on their climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. The original Six Americas model requires a 36 question-screener and although there is increasing interest in using these segments to guide educ…
Warm glow is associated with low- but not high-cost sustainable behaviour
The future of behavioral insights: On the importance of socially situated nudges
Socially minded nudges are the more sociable cousin of regular nudges: they reveal important information about other people's behavior, raise normative expectations about what is desirable, can be shared and transmitted online or offline and leverage social incentives and sanctions that regulate individual and group behavior. In this article, I argue that many of the most successful nudges – that is, nudges that have been well replicated, offer p…
Detecting local environmental change: The role of experience in shaping risk judgments about global warming
Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events (e.g. flooding, heat waves, and wildfires). As a result, it is often reasoned that as more individuals experience unusual weather patterns that are consistent with changing climate conditions, the more their concern about global warming will increase, and the more motivated they will become to respond and address the problem effectively. Social science…
The fake news game: Actively inoculating against the risk of misinformation
The rapid spread of online misinformation poses an increasing risk to societies worldwide. To help counter this, we developed a ‘fake news game’ in which participants are actively tasked with creating a news article about a strongly politicized issue (the European refugee crisis) using misleading tactics, from the perspective of different types of fake news producers. To pilot test the efficacy of the game, we conducted a randomized field study (…
Discussing global warming leads to greater acceptance of climate science
Climate change is an urgent global issue, with demands for personal, collective, and governmental action. Although a large body of research has investigated the influence of communication on public engagement with climate change, few studies have investigated the role of interpersonal discussion. Here we use panel data with 2 time points to investigate the role of climate conversations in shaping beliefs and feelings about global warming. We find…
Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science
Uncertainty is an inherent part of knowledge, and yet in an era of contested expertise, many shy away from openly communicating their uncertainty about what they know, fearful of their audience's reaction. But what effect does communication of such epistemic uncertainty have? Empirical research is widely scattered across many disciplines. This interdisciplinary review structures and summarizes current practice and research across domains, combini…
The gateway belief model: A large-scale replication
Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society
Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation
The spread of online misinformation poses serious challenges to societies worldwide. In a novel attempt to address this issue, we designed a psychological intervention in the form of an online browser game. In the game, players take on the role of a fake news producer and learn to master six documented techniques commonly used in the production of misinformation: polarisation, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people onli…
The Experience of Consensus: Video as an Effective Medium to Communicate Scientific Agreement on Climate Change
Research on the gateway belief model indicates that communicating the scientific consensus on global warming acts as a “gateway” to other beliefs and support for action. We test whether a video conveying the scientific consensus on global warming is more effective than a text transcript with the same information. Results show that the video was significantly more effective than the transcript in increasing people’s perception of scientific agreem…
Countering science denial
Using social and behavioural science to support Covid-19 pandemic response
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on nav…
Psychology (73 works) · Social Psychology (51 works) · Political science (48 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (43 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (39 works) · Computer Science (33 works) · Climate change (32 works) · Environmental Education and Sustainability (28 works) · Misinformation (25 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (20 works)