Sander van der Linden

Sander L. van der Linden is a social psychologist and 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.[1] He is also a fellow and director of studies in psychological and behavioural sciences 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.[2]

Sander van der Linden

FRSA
Sander van der Linden
at Hay Festival in 2019
NationalityNetherlands
Alma materLondon School of Economics and Political Science, Ph.D., 2014
Known forGateway belief model, Bad News (video game)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Van der Linden studies the psychology of social influence, risk, human judgment, and decision-making.

He was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science[3] and is particularly known for his research on the psychology of social issues, such as fake news,[4] COVID-19,[5] and climate change.[6] He is recognized as an authority on understanding and dealing with misinformation.[7]

Research Contributions

A Psychological Vaccine Against Misinformation

Van der Linden is most well-known and widely credited for his research program that looks at how to protect people from fake news and misinformation.[8][9] 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.[10][11][12] He is also known for co-developing the popular fake news game Bad News (video game),[13][14] 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!"[15][16] aims to inoculate against misinformation about COVID-19 specifically and is listed as a resource by the World Health Organization.[17]

Gateway Belief Model

Van der Linden is known for the Gateway belief model (GBM),[18] 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. 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 scientifc agreement on an issue is therefore regarded as a "gateway" cognition[19] to eliciting subsequent changes in related beliefs that people hold about contested social and scientific issues. 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.[20] The model has been applied in a variety of contexts, including climate change,[21][22] vaccination,[23] the Brexit debate,[24] and GMOs.[25] One analysis from Skeptical Science of 37 published papers notes that about 86% of them support the broad tenets of the GBM.[26]

Education

He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the department of psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University and was a visiting research scholar (2012-2014) at Yale University.[27] He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science[2] and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Amsterdam and California State University, Chico.[28]

Career

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, among other professional publications.[29][30][31][32]

He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology.[33]

Books
  • Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society (Earthscan Risk in Society), 2019. ISBN 978-0367235437

References
  1. "Department Welcomes Dr. van der Linden". Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  2. "Sander van der Linden's Cambridge University Department Page". Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  3. "APS Rising Stars". Retrieved 7 March 2019.
  4. "Could this be the cure for fake news?". BBC. Retrieved 7 March 2019.
  5. "Tackling COVID-19 Dr Sander van der Linden". University of Cambridge. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  6. "How Psychology can Save the World from Climate Change". NPR. Retrieved 7 March 2019.
  7. Robson, David, It's only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist, The Guardian, Sunday, November 29, 2020
  8. Ortiz, Diego (2018). "Could this be the cure for fake news?". BBC Future.
  9. Robson, David (2020). "Vaccinating against viruses of the mind". British Psychological Association.
  10. 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.
  11. 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. doi:10.1037/xap0000315.
  12. Roozenbeek, J; van der Linden, S (2019). "Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation". Palgrave Communications. 5 (65).
  13. Gold, Hadas (2020). "Researchers have created a 'vaccine' for fake news. It's a game". CNN.
  14. "Bad News". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  15. Reader, Ruth (2020). "This game can stop people from falling for COVID-19 conspiracies". Fast Company.
  16. "GoViral!". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. "How to report misinformation online". WHO.
  18. 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.
  19. Mooney, Chris (2015). "Researchers think they've found a "gateway belief" that leads to greater science acceptance". The Washington Post.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. Hotchkiss, Michael (2015). "Emphasizing consensus about safety boosts support for vaccines". Princeton University News.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. Cook, John (2020). "The Consensus on Consensus Messaging". Skeptical Science.
  27. "Princeton Biography". Princeton University. Retrieved 17 February 2019.
  28. "Sander van der Linden". Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  29. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. APA. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  30. "Personality and Individual Differences". Elsevier. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  31. "Journal of Risk Research". Taylor & Francis. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
  32. "Current Research in Social and Ecological Psychology". Elsevier. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  33. "Journal of Environmental Psychology". Elsevier. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
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