Sander van der Linden

The Telegraph Headline: New Covid virus found in wild Brazilian bats Subhed: The discovery of a ‘furin cleavage site’ suggests the mutation which helps the virus adapt to humans is naturally occurring

Sad day for the folks who staked their reputations on lab leak conspiracy theories.

www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...

How to help friends and family dig out of a conspiracy theory black hole Some tried and trusted techniques that might help.

Here's my top 5 ways to help friends & family falling down the conspiracy hole:

1. Prebunk - prevention is key

2. Validate their worldview first

3. Reiterate social consensus to highlight extremism

4. Involve ex-conspiracy theorists

5. Keep in touch & prevent isolation

shorturl.at/dmldd

Yes

The Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST): A psychometrically validated measure of news veracity discernment - Behavior Research Methods Interest in the psychology of misinformation has exploded in recent years. Despite ample research, to date there is no validated framework to measure misinformation susceptibility. Therefore, we intro...

The standardized Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST) link.springer.com/article/10.3...

It is! But it doesn't seem to protect against misinfo effects, which is somewhat surprising.

I hear a lot about misinformation as a "symptom" of "distrust". Here we test this & find that while trust is important, it doesn't buffer: misinfo isn't mitigated by high trust. Both misinfo & distrust *independently* predict vaccine denial. It's a disease of its own!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Can We "Inoculate" the Brain Against Misinformation? Can we trust anything in the age of AI? A new study finds that "psychological inoculation" helps people better discern fact from fiction without causing undue distrust of media.

We "Inoculate" the Brain Against #Misinformation www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/soci... by @profsanderlinden.bsky.social

"...helps people better discern reliable from unreliable news without causing cynicism about media."

Needed: "ability to spot & discuss attempts to manipulate public opinion"

But cognitive antibody generation can be measured both physiologically and with fMRI in a way that maps onto behavioral constructs so it's pretty concrete to me.

Bad Vaxx A wild game about a serious subject

For sure - we created some fun games that might lure people in by taking on the role of a grifter, e.g. Bad Vaxx www.badvaxx.com

We tackle that philosophical question here psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Can We "Inoculate" the Brain Against Misinformation? Can we trust anything in the age of AI? A new study finds that "psychological inoculation" helps people better discern fact from fiction without causing undue distrust of media.

Can we inoculate the brain against misinformation?

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/soci...

FYI might be of interest @katestarbird.bsky.social @ninajankowicz.com @noupside.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social @lkfazio.bsky.social @dgrand.bsky.social @brendannyhan.bsky.social @tspampatti.bsky.social @jayvanbavel.bsky.social @matthewfacciani.bsky.social @commscholar.bsky.social

We hope the field will take forward this more flexible approach to evaluate misinformation interventions using Signal Detection Theory. This was a long time coming & made possible because of the brilliant collabs & computational work from @almogsi.bsky.social & team + @lewan.bsky.social

END
5/5

Bottom line: policy-makers, educators, and practitioners can readily scale inoculation interventions without worrying about whether they might make people too vigilant (if there was such a concern in the current political environment!).

✔️We can help people distinguish signal from noise. 4/5

Unlike prior work, we advance a Bayesian ordinal multi-level model that directly estimates discrimination ability & response bias, respecting the ordinal-level nature of reliability ratings, accounting for item-level & participant-level random effects + explicitly modelling latent variance. 3/5

Can people learn to detect signal amidst all the noise?

✅Using Signal Detection Theory (SDT), we find that prebunking/inoculation interventions consistently improve people's ability to discern between reliable and unreliable news without making people unduly skeptical or credulous!

2/5

New Bayesian *Meta-Analysis* of Psychological Inoculation Against Misinformation! Open-access 👇Thread! Buckle up

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

✅We find that prebunking interventions improve people's ability to discern between reliable & unreliable news without causing undue skepticism!

"The more misinformation is repeated the more likely people are to believe it."

In the latest episode of The We Society podcast, Will Hutton is joined by @profsanderlinden.bsky.social to discuss how we can inoculate ourselves against misinformation.
🎙️ media.leverhulme.ac.uk/podcast/sand...

Cambridge disinformation summit (2026) - Cambridge Judge Business School Connect with Cambridge Judge! Explore our full calendar of upcoming events, learn about our programmes and connect with world-class speakers.

Three weeks remaining: Call for Papers for the Cambridge Disinformation Summit, 8-10 April 2026, at the University of Cambridge.

Research on systemic risks from technology that affects information streams or the amplification or monetization of disinformation.

www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/events/cambr...

Submit your work to the 2026 Cambridge Disinformation Summit! We're going strong, back next year and look forward to receiving top submissions from across the world on systemic risks from technology that impact disinformation. 👇

www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/events/cambr...

@jagolinzer.bsky.social

Thanks to @mitchprinstein.bsky.social at APA!

there's a lot of misinfo out there about what works to counter misinfo (womp womp). this is a great resource and a must-read for public health: awspntest.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Public health is under attack by a deluge of misinformation. We offer a consensus report from the American Psychological Association summarizing what we know & what interventions are effective in countering it. We provide 8 concrete recommendations. Open-access - awspntest.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Can we inoculate ourselves against misinformation?
In episode 4 of The We Society podcast, @profsanderlinden.bsky.social joins Will Hutton to discuss how people can become influenced by misinformation and how we can gain resistance to false persuasion.
🎙️ media.leverhulme.ac.uk/podcast/sand...

Can we inoculate ourselves against misinformation? In this episode of the We Society @profsanderlinden.bsky.social joins Will Hutton to discuss how people can become influenced by misinformation & his research into how we can gain resistance to false persuasion. podfollow.com/the-we-socie...

It was a pleasure to talk to Will Hutton about misinformation and inoculation on the We Society Podcast for the Academy of Social Sciences (@acadsocsciences.bsky.social)

Full episode here podfollow.com/the-we-socie...

It's been 2 years since Foolproof, unfortunately misinformation is a bigger issue than ever, but excited to see all the international versions come out now. Here's the South Korean cover, one of the coolest I've seen!

Simplified Chinese and Turkish editions next!

Published today: One of the biggest #science #communication studies to date. We asked 71,922 people in 68 countries how they #engage with information about #science and combined the data with several country-level factors: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #OpenAccess

Just arrived in Portugal for the Society for Experimental Social Psychology Conference (SESP). 27 degrees out here and a rooftop pool, that’s my kind of conference!

Analytical Sociology Seminar: Sander van der Linden Welcome to the Analytical Social Seminar with Sander van der Linden from University of Cambridge. Psychological inoculation against misinformation. The seminar is open for the public. Language: Englis...

Join us on Thursday, 9 October, at 14:30 CET for the Analytical Sociology Seminar with Sander van der Linden @profsanderlinden.bsky.social 🔹 Psychological Inoculation Against Misinformation🔹 More info: liu.se/en/event/ana...