Quick Facts
Biography
Sander L. van der Linden,(born 8 March 1986), is a Dutch social psychologist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge where he directs the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory. He is also a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, a researcher at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University and a psychologist at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication.
He is also a public speaker and popular science writer and his work is regularly quoted in outlets such as the New York Times, the BBC, NPR, Time Magazine, and the Washington Post. He was awarded Fellowship to the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) for having made prominent contributions to social change research and previously nominated as one of the "30 Top Thinkers under 30" by Pacific Standard Magazine.
van der Linden studies the psychology of social influence, risk, communication, judgment, and decision-making. His research on the psychology of climate change has been described as "seminal". He is listed as a global expert on debunking misinformation in a post-truth expert database maintained by the University of Bristol.
Education and Background
Van der Linden was born in Waalwijk the Netherlands, where he grew up to Jewish parents. In a recent interview, van der Linden revealed that much of his family was executed during WW II, which inspired him to pursue his interest in the psychology of human behavior, cooperation, and decision-making. He started his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science, but soon moved to work on the psychology of risk with Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale University. Leiserowitz was a doctoral student of Paul Slovic. In 2014, van der Linden moved to the Department of Psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University to work with Eldar Shafir at the Kahneman Center for Behavioral Science. At Princeton, van der Linden was a Fellow of Mathey College, alongside colleagues, such as Susan Fiske. Van der Linden joined the University of Cambridge in 2016.
Fake News Vaccine
Van der Linden achieved particular notariety with a study in which he and his co-authors developed what the media described as a "Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News". The vaccine metaphor is based on a psychological concept known as inoculation theory. According to Altmetrics, the study was covered by about 100 news outlets around the world. Van der Linden and colleagues have appeared on NPR's Science Friday to talk about the study and BBC World News. Van der Linden also appears in a number of TV documentaries, TEDx videosand in an initiative from The Economist to help teach young people how to spot fake news. On the invitation of United Nation's Special Rapporteur David Kaye, van der Linden spoke at Wilton Park about the psychology of fake news.
Notable Research and Theories
Van der Linden's work on the psychology of climate change has been influential and receives frequent attention in the media. His theory of risk perception suggests that there are three main psychological dimensions to risk, cognitive, affective, and socio-cultural factors. He is one of the main authors and proponents of a social-psychological theory of judgment and opinion formation known as the Gateway Belief Model (GBM). Other notable work by van der Linden includes the psychological factors that cause altruistic behaviors to go viral and the discovery that viral social movements such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge tend to have a short "half-life". He also coined the term; Conspiracy effect, which describes public exposure to conspiracy theories as a social contagion.
Honors and awards
- Frank Prize for research in Public Interest Communications (2017)
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2017)
- Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (2017)
- President's Volunteer Service Award (Gold Medal, 2008)
- American Psychological Association Graduate Research Prize (2014)
- Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Dissertation Award (2015)
- International Association of Applied Psychology Best Paper Award (2013)
Personal Views
van der Linden is a frequent commentator on post-truth politics. Alongside Lawrence Krauss, he was asked to comment on the 2016 US election by Research Gate, he described the Trump campaign as a classic approach to spreading "misinformation, fear, and prejudice" and that Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement "goes against the opinion of the American people". Van der Linden is also a noted critic of the cultural cognition thesis proposed by Dan Kahan.