Sander van der Linden

Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. His research looks at how people process (mis)information, how it spreads in online networks, and how we can most effectively prebunk and inoculate people against false information. He leads national consensus reports on the psychology of misinformation and serves on the World Health Organization's (WHO) infodemic working group. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). He co-developed the award-winning fake news game, Bad News, which has been played by millions of people around the world and he regularly advises governments, public health authorities, and social media companies on how to combat the spread of misinformation. He is ranked among the top 1% of highly cited social scientists worldwide and has published over 150 research papers. He frequently appears on international TV and radio and his work is regularly featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, and the BBC. He has been described by WIRED magazine as one of “15 top thinkers” and by Fast Company Design as one “four heroes who are defending digital democracy online”. Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE. He is the author of FOOLPROOF: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity (WW Norton/HarperCollins, 2023).