skip to content

Department of Psychology

Professor of Social Psychology in Society 

Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory 

Professorial Fellow, Churchill College 

 

Biography

Sander van der Linden is Professor of Social Psychology in Society in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. Before coming to Cambridge, he held posts at Princeton and Yale University. His research interests center around the psychology of human judgment and decision-making. In particular, he is interested in the social influence and persuasion process and how people are influenced by (mis)information and gain resistance to persuasion through psychological inoculation. He is also interested in the study of fake news, media effects, social networks, and belief systems (e.g., conspiracy theories), as well as the emergence of social norms, polarization, reasoning about evidence, and public understanding of risk and uncertainty. His research spans from social psychology to cognitive science using a variety of techniques, from virtual reality to survey and lab studies to computational social science and large-scale (online) interventions.

His book FOOLPROOF: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity (HarperCollins/WW Norton, www.foolproofbook.com) was listed by the BBC, Cosmopolitan, Apple, Men's Health, Inc.com, and Next Big Idea's as one of the most anticipated non-fiction books of 2023 and named a Financial Times Best Book of the Year, Waterstones Best Book of the Year, One of Nature's Top 10 Books of 2023, A Notable Behavioral Science Book of 2023, and won the 2023 Best Psychology Book Prize from the British Psychological Society.

He has published around 150 papers and is ranked among the top 1% of all social scientists worldwide (Clarivate ISI Highly Cited Researcher) and among the top 2% across all scientific fields (Ioannidis, Boyack, & Baas, 2020). 

His research is regularly featured in the popular media, including outlets such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, the BBC, CNN, The Economist, NPR, the Washington Post and Time Magazine as well as TV, including BBC Newsnight, BBC World, the Today Show, CBS Inside Edition, and NBC Nightly News.

He was featured on BBC's People Fixing the World and Mozilla's "Social Media & Democracy" documentary.

As part of the "radical thinkers" campaign, the University of Cambridge made a short film about his research on developing a psychological "vaccine" against misinformation.

For recent profiles on Prof van der Linden's research please see:

As well as interviews in APS, ScienceNews. PNAS & the British Psychological Society.

A TED-ED video that centers around his research on how to spot disinformation can be viewed here.

Prof van der Linden has given many keynote lectures and gives talks and consults regularly about his research for the public, industry, and government, including venues such as the World Health Organization (WHO), National Academy of Science (NAS), The Hay Festival, Behavioural Insights Team, the BBC, Microsoft, Bank of England, the World Bank, Edelman, Festival of Ideas, United Nations, WhatsApp/Facebook, TEDx, Google, UK Cabinet/Foreign Office, EU Commission, and the US State/Defense Department. You can read more about his partnerships with Facebook, Google Jigsaw, and the 'Infodemic' Coalition IRIS.

For a full list of films, interviews, and lectures please see here. For a short biography please click HERE.

You can follow him on Twitter @Sander_vdLinden

Awards

His research on the psychology of judgment and decision-making has been widely recognized. In 2017, Prof. van der Linden was named a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science (APS). In 2019, he received the Sage Early Career Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and the Sir James Cameron Medal for the Public Understanding of Risk from the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. He has received best paper awards for his research from organisations such as the American Psychological Association (APA), the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), particularly for his work on the psychology of sustainability and climate change.

He received the 2020 grand Frank Prize awarded by the University of Florida's College of Journalism for research in the public interest on fake news and misinformation. Fast Company Magazine recently described van der Linden as one of "4 heroes of digital democracy", WIRED magazine featured him as one of "15 top thinkers", and he was nominated by Pacific Standard Magazine as one of the "30 Top Thinkers under 30". He is a chartered psychologist (CPsychol), a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society (FPSyS), the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), the British Psychological Society (AFBPsS), and a recipient of the United States President's Volunteer Service Award (Gold Medal).

The Fake News Game, Bad News, as featured in MIT Tech Review, received the Brouwers "Trust Prize" from the Royal Holland Society of Sciences, an honorable mention in Fast Company's 2018 Innovation by Design Awards, as well as the runner-up BX award for most outstanding and innovative behavioural science research from the UK Behavioural Insights Team. The game was on exhibit at the Nobel Prize Summit (2023), the London Design Museum for Beazley's 2018 Designs of the Year and in Australia's Museum of Design for Games for Peace. Harmony Square, a game developed with CISA and the Department of Homeland Security to help people spot political fake news during elections was a finalist in the Games for Change Award.

In 2020, Prof van der Linden's lab launched GoViral! in collaboration with the UK Cabinet Office with support from the WHO and United Nations. Go Viral is aimed at inoculating people against misinformation about COVID-19 specifically. The game received silver in the 2021 Public Communications Service Excellent Awards from the Government's Communication Service.

Editorial Positions and Affiliations

Prof van der Linden served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology (JEP) from 2018-2021, the premier journal covering all human-environment interactions (IF = 7.65). He also chaired the American Psychological Association's Consensus Report on the Psychology of Misinformation and was a member of the American Psychological Association's (APA) task force on climate change. He chaired the BMJ's special series on vaccination and social media and sits on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals.

He is dedicated to conducting psychological science in the public interest and frequently writes for Scientific American Mind. He also had a media partnership with Time Magazine to gather “big data” on social-psychological issues and served as an academic consultant to BBC's "Tomorrow's World" where he helped create a Global Values Quiz to look at the large-scale aggregation of human values.

Prof. van der Linden sits on the management board of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge and is affiliated with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University. He co-founded the Risk and Uncertainty Conference (RUC).

Prior to Cambridge, Prof. van der Linden was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, and the Kahneman Center for Behavioral Science at Princeton University. Before that, he was a visiting research scholar (2012-2014) at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Publications

Key publications: 

Selected publications from 2011 onwards (for access see Google Scholar or ResearchGate):

van der Linden, S. (2024). Countering misinformation through psychological inoculation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
 
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K., Cook, J., van der Linden, S., Roozenbeek, J., & Oreskes, N. (2023). Misinformation and the epistemic integrity of democracy. Current Opinion in Psychology, 101711.
 
Kerr, J., van der Bles, A. M., Dryhurst, S., Schneider, C. R., Chopurian, V., Freeman, A. L., & van der Linden, S. (2023). The effects of communicating uncertainty around statistics, on public trust. Royal Society Open Science, 10(11), 230604.
 
Kukowski, C. A., Hofmann, W., Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., Vandenbergh, M. P., & Nielsen, K. S. (2023). The perceived feasibility of behavior change is positively associated with support for domain-matched climate policies. One Earth, 6(11), 1554-1563.
 
Rathje, S., & van der Linden, S. (2023). Shifting online incentive structures to reduce polarization and the spread of misinformation. In C. Sunstein & L. Reisch (Eds), Research Handbook on Nudges and Society (pp. 91-108). Edward Elgar Publishing.
 
Neylan, J., Biddlestone, M., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2023). How to “inoculate” against multimodal misinformation: A conceptual replication of Roozenbeek and van der Linden (2020). Nature Scientific Reports, 13(1), 18273.
 
Gundersen, A. B., van der Linden, S., Piksa, M., Morzy, M., Piasecki, J., Ryguła, R., ... & Kunst, J. R. (2023). The role of perceived minority-group status in the conspiracy beliefs of factual majority groups. Royal Society Open Science, 10(10), 221036.
 
Cole, J. C., Gillis, A. J., van der Linden, S., Cohen, M. A., & Vandenbergh, M. P. (2023). Social Psychological Perspectives on Political Polarization: Insights and Implications for Climate Change. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17456916231186409.
 
Saleh, N., Makki, F., van der Linden, S., & Roozenbeek, J. (2023). Inoculating against extremist persuasion techniques–Results from a randomised controlled trial in post-conflict areas in Iraq. Advances in Psychology, 1(1), 1-21.
 
Harrop, I., Roozenbeek, J., Madsen, J., & van der Linden, S. (2023). Inoculation can reduce the perceived reliability of polarizing social media content. International Journal of Communication 17, 5291-5315.
 
Maertens, R., Götz, F. M., Golino, H. F., Roozenbeek, J., Schneider, C. R., Kyrychenko, Y., ... & van der Linden, S. (2023). The Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST): A psychometrically validated measure of news veracity discernment. Behavior Research Methods, 1-37.
 
Schneider, C. R., & van der Linden, S. (2023). An Emotional Road to Sustainability: How Affective Science Can Support pro-Climate Action. Emotion Review.
 
Schneider, C.R., & van der Linden, S. (2023). Social norms as a powerful lever for motivating pro-climate actions. One Earth 6(4), 346-351.
 
van der Linden, S., Swire-Thompson, B., & Roozenbeek, J. (2023). The truth is out there: The psychology of conspiracy theories and how to counter them. Applied Cognitive Psychology 37(2), 252-255.
 
Bergquist, M., Thiel, M., Goldberg, M., & van der Linden, S. (2023). Field interventions for climate change mitigation behaviors: A second-order meta-analysis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120(13), e2214851120.
 
Rathje, S., Roozenbeek, J., Van Bavel, J., & van der Linden, S. (2023). Accuracy and social motivations shape judgments of (mis)information. Nature Human Behaviour.
 
Debnath, R., van der Linden, S., Alvarez, R. M., & Sovacool, B. K. (2023). Facilitating system-level behavioural climate action using computational social science. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-2.
 
Götz, F. M., Maertens, R., Loomba, S., & van der Linden, S. (2023). Let the algorithm speak: How to use neural networks for automatic item generation in psychological scale development. Psychological Methods.
 

Habib, G. L., Yousuf, H., Bredius, L., Bindraban, N. R., Winter, M. M., Scherder, E. J. A., .van der Linden, S., & Hofstra, L. (2023). The importance of cultural tailoring of communicators and media outlets in an influenza vaccination awareness campaign: a digital randomized trial. Nature Scientific Reports, 13(1), 1744.

Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., Goldberg, B., Rathje, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2022). Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media. Science Advances 8(34).

Rathje, S., He, J.K., Roozenbeek. J., Van Bavel, J., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Social media behavior is associated with vaccine hesitancy. PNAS Nexus.

Goldberg, M., Gustafson A., van der Linden, S., Rosenthal, S., & Leiserowitz, A. (2022).  Communicating the scientific consensus on climate change: diverse audiences, competing information, and effects over time. Environment and Behavior.

Götz, F. M., Maertens, R., Loomba, S., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Let the algorithm speak: How to use neural networks for automatic item generation in psychological scale development. Psychological Methods.

Traberg, C., Harjani, T., Basol, M., Biddlestone, M., Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Inoculating against misinformation in the modern digital age. In T. Nguyen, T.D. Purnat, & S. Briand (Eds.), Managing infodemics in the 21st century-Addressing new challenges in the information eco system. Springer Nature.

Pilditch, T., Roozenbeek, J., Madsen, J., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Psychological inoculation can reduce susceptibility to misinformation in large rational agent networks. Royal Society Open Science 9, 211953.

Schneider, C., Freeman, A., Spiegelhalter, D., & van der Linden, S. (2022). The effects of communicating scientific uncertainty on trust and decision-making in a public health context. Judgment and Decision-Making 17(4), 849-882.

Lewandowsky, S., & van der Linden, S. (2022, in press). Interventions based on social norms could benefit from considering adversarial information environments: Comment on Constantino et al (2022). Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

Sabherwal, A., Shreedhar, G., &  van der Linden, S. (2022). Inoculating against threats to climate advocates’ image: intersectional environmentalism and the Indian farmers’ protest. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 100051.

Biddlestone, M., Azevedo, F., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Climate of conspiracy: Meta-analysis of the consequences of belief in conspiracy theories about climate change. Current Opinion in Psychology 46, 101390.

Roozenbeek, J., Traberg, C.S., van der Linden, S. (2022). Technique-based inoculation against real-world misinformation. Royal Society Open Science 9, 211719.

Roozenbeek, J., Maertens, R., Herzog, S. M., Geers, M., Kurvers, R., Sultan, M., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Susceptibility to misinformation is consistent across question framings and response modes and better explained by myside bias and partisanship than analytical thinking. Judgment and Decision Making, 17(3).

Traberg, C.S., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Psychological inoculation against misinformation: Current evidence and future directions. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 700 (1), 136-151.

de Keersmaecker, J., Schmid, K., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Emissions cuts take political and social innovation too. Nature 602, 33.

van der Linden, S. (2022). Misinformation: Susceptibility, Spread, and Interventions to Immunize the Public. Nature Medicine 28, 460-467.

van der Linden, S. & Lewandowsky, S. (2022). Letter to the Editors of Psychological Science: Boosting Scientific Consensus is Likely to Correct False Beliefs Across Domains: Regarding Zarzeczna et al. (2021) on van Stekelenburg et al. (2021). Psychological Science.

Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2022). How to combat health misinformation: A psychological approach. American Journal of Health Promotion 36(3), 11-17.

Rathje, S., Roozenbeek, J., Steenbuch Traberg, C., Van Bavel, J., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Meta-analysis reveals that accuracy nudges have little to no effect for US conservatives: Regarding Pennycook et al. (2020). Psychological Science.

Yousuf, H., van der Linden, S., van Essen, T., Gommers, D., Scherder, E., Narula, J., & Hofstra, L. (2021). Dutch perspectives toward governmental trust, vaccination, myths, and knowledge about vaccines and COVID-19. JAMA Network Open, 4(12):e2140529.

Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Inoculation theory and misinformation. NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. ISBN: 978-9934-564-49-9.

Kacha, O., & van der Linden, S. (2021). The moderating role of moral norms and personal cost in compliance with pro-environmental social norms. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology 2, 100020

van der Linden, S., & Weber, E.U. (2021). Can behavioral science solve the climate crisis? Current Opinion in Behavioural Sciences.

Fasce, A., Adrian-Ventura, J., Lewandowsky, S., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Science through a tribal lens: A group-based account of polarization over scientific facts. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.

Steenbuch Traberg, C., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Birds of a feather are persuaded together: Perceived source credibility mediates the effect of political bias on misinformation susceptibility. Personality and Individual Differences 185, 111269.

Uenal, F., Sidanius, J., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Climate change threats increase modern racism as a function of social dominance orientation and ingroup identification. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 97, 104228.

Schneider, C.R., Freeman, A., Spiegelhalter, D., & van der Linden, S. (2021). The effects of quality of evidence communication on perceptions of public health information about COVID-19: two randomised controlled trials. PloS ONE 0259048.

Dan, V., Paris, B., Donovan, J., Hameleers, M., Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., & von Sikorski, C. (2021). Visual mis-and disinformation, social media, and democracy. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Kerr, J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Communicating expert consensus increases personal support for COVID-19 mitigation policies. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Kerr, J., Schneider, C., Recchia, G., Dryhurst, S., Sahlin, U., Dufouil, C., Arwidson, P., Freeman, A., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Correlates of intended COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across time and countries: results from a series of cross-sectional surveys. BMJ Open, e048025.

Rathje, S., Van Bavel, J.J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Outgroup animosity drives engagement on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Roozenbeek, J., Freeman, A.F., and van der Linden, S. (2021). How accurate are accuracy nudges? A direct pre-registered replication of Pennycook et al. (2021). Psychological Science.

Compton, J., van der Linden, S., Cook, J., & Basol, M. (2021). Inoculation theory in the post-truth era: Extant findings and new frontiers for contested science, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.

Vivion, M., Anassour Laouan Sidi, E., Betsch, C., Dionne, M., Dubé, E., Driedger, S. M., van der Linden,S ... & Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN). (2022). Prebunking messaging to inoculate against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation: An effective strategy for public health. Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 1-11.
 

Fong, A., Roozenbeek, J., Goldwert, D., Rathje, S., & van der Linden, S. (2021). The language of conspiracy: A psychological analysis of speech used by conspiracy theorists and their followers on Twitter. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 24(4), 606-623.

Rutjens, B., van der Linden, S., van der Lee, R., Zarzeczna, N. (2021). A group processes approach to antiscience beliefs and endorsement of alternative facts. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 24(4), 513-517.

Uenal, F., Sidanius, J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Social and ecological dominance orientations: two sides of the same coin? Social and ecological dominance orientations predict decreased support for climate change mitigation policies. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.

Weinschenk, A., Panagopoulos, C., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Democratic Norms, Social Projection, and False Consensus in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Political Marketing.

Balmford, A., Bradbury, R.B., Bauer, J.M., Broad, S., Burgess, G., Burgman, M., Byerly, H., Clayton, S., Espelosin, D., Ferraro, P.J., Fisher, B., Garnett, E.E., Jones, J.P.G., Marteau, T., Otieno, M., Polasky, S., Ricketts, T.H., Sandbrook, C., Sullivan-Wiley, K., Trevelyan, R., van der Linden, S., Veríssimo, D., Steensen Nielsen, K. (2021). Making more effective use of human behavioural science in conservation interventions. Biological Conservation. [alphabetical].

Nielsen, K., Marteau, T., Bauer, J.M., Bradbury, R.B., Broad, S., Burgess, G., Burgman, M., Byerly, H., Clayton, S., Espelosin, D., Ferraro, P.J., Fisher, B., Garnett, E.A., Jones, J.P.G., Otieno, M., Polasky, S., Ricketts, T.H., Trevelyan, R., van der Linden, S., Verissimo, D., & Balmford, A. (2021). Biodiversity conservation as a promising frontier for behavioural science. Nature Human Behaviour. [alphabetical].

Yousuf, H., van der Linden, S., Bredius, L., van Essen, G.A., Sweep, G., Preminger, Z., van Gorp, E., Scherder, E., Narula, J., & Hofstra, L. (2021). A media intervention applying debunking versus non-debunking content to combat vaccine misinformation in elderly in the Netherlands: A digital randomised trial. The Lancet EClinicalMedicine.

Kerr, J., Freeman, A., Marteau, T., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Effect of Information about COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness and Side Effects on Behavioural Intentions: Two Online Experiments. Vaccines 9 (4), 379.

Kerr, J., Panagopoulos, C., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Political polarization on COVID-19 pandemic response in the United States. Personality and Individual Differences.

Basol, M., Roozenbeek, J., Berriche, M., Uenal, F., McClanahan, W.P., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Towards psychological herd immunity: Cross-cultural evidence for two prebunking interventions against COVID-19 misinformation. Big Data & Society.

van der Linden, S., Roozenbeek, J., Maertens, R., Basol, M., Kacha, O., Rathje, S., Steenbuch Traberg, C. (2021). How can psychological science help counter the spread of fake news? Spanish Journal of Psychology.

Schneider, C.R., Dryhurst, S., Kerr, J., Freeman, A.J., Recchia, G., Spiegelhalter, D., & van der Linden, S. (2021). COVID-19 risk perception: a longitudinal analysis of its predictors and associations with health protective behaviours in the United Kingdom. Journal of Risk Research.

Rutjens, B.T., van der Linden, S., & van der Lee, R. (2021). Science skepticism in times of COVID-19. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 24(2), 276-283.

Lewandowsky, S., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Countering misinformation and fake news through inoculation and prebunking. European Review of Social Psychology.

van der Linden, S., Dixon, G., Clarke, C., & Cook, J. (2021). Inoculating against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. The Lancet EClinicalMedicine 33, 100772.

Maertens, R., & van der Linden, S. (2021). A Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News. Microbiologist, 22(1), 14-17.

Sabherwal, A., Ballew, M., van der Linden, S., Gustafson, A.., Goldberg, M., Maibach, E., Kotcher, J., Swim, J., Rosenthal, S., & Leiserowitz, A. (2021, in press). The Greta Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg Predicts Intentions to Engage in Climate Activism in the United States. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

van der Linden, S. (2021). Some recommendations for doing high impact research in social psychological science. Asian Journal of Social Psychology.

van der Linden, S. (2021). The Gateway Belief Model (GBM): A Review and Research Agenda for Communicating the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. Current Opinion in Psychology 42, 7-12.

Blastland, M., Freeman, A.L.J., van der Linden, S., Marteau, T.M., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2020). Five rules for evidence communication. Nature (587), 362-364.

van Eck, C., Mulder, B., & van der Linden, S. (2020, in press). Echo Chamber Effects in the Climate Change Blogosphere. Environmental Communication.

Vraga, E., & van der Linden, S.  (2020). Responding to climate science denial. In D.C. Holmes & L.M. Richardson (Eds.), Research Handbook on Communicating Climate Change. Edward Elgar: UK (pp. 79-91).

Saleh, N., Roozenbeek, J., Makki, F., McClanahan, W.P., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Active inoculation boosts attitudinal resistance against extremist persuasion techniques - A novel approach towards the prevention of violent extremism. Behavioural Public Policy.

Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Breaking Harmony Square: A  game that "inoculates" against political misinformation. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review 1(8).

McClanahan, W.P., & van der Linden, S. (2020). An uncalculated risk: ego-depletion reduces the influence of perceived risk but not state affect on criminal choice. Psychology, Crime, & Law.

Roozenbeek, J., Schneider, C., Dryhurst, S., Kerr, J., Freeman, A., Recchia, G., van der Bles, A.M., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19 around the world. Royal Society Open Science 7(10), 201199.

van Eck, C., Mulder, B., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Climate change risk perceptions of audiences in the climate change blogosphere. Sustainability, 12(19), 7990.

Goldberg, M., Gustafson, A., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Leveraging social science to generate lasting engagement with climate change. One Earth (Cell Press) 3, 314-324.

van der Linden, S., Pearson, A., & Van Boven, L. (2020, in press). Behavoural climate policy. Behavioural Public Policy.

Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M., & van der Linden, S. (2020, in press). Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology:Applied.

Nielsen, K., van der Linden, S., & Stern, P.C. (2020). How behavioural interventions can reduce the climate impact of energy use. Joule (Cell Press) 4, 1-4.

van der Linden, S., & Goldberg, M. (2020). Alternative meta-analysis of behavioural interventions to promote action on climate change yields different conclusions. Nature Communications 11, 3915.

Roozenbeek, J., Maertens, R., McClanahan, W.P., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Differentiating item and testing effects in inoculation research on online misinformation: Solomon revisited. Educational and Psychological Measurement.

Maertens, R., Anseel, F., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Comatting climate change misinformation: Evidence for longevity of inoculation and consensus messaging effects. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 70, 101455.

Shrum, T., Markowitz, E., Buck, H., Gregory, R., van der Linden, S., Shazheen, A., & Van Boven, L. (2020). Behavioral frameworks to understand public perceptions of and risk response to carbon dioxide removal. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 10, 20200002.

Dryhurst, S., Schneider, C., Kerr, J., Freeman, A., Rechia, G., van der Bles, A.M., Spiegelhalter, D., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Risk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world. Journal of Risk Research.

van der Linden, S., Panagopoulos, C., Azevedo, F., & Jost, J.T. (2020). The paranoid style in American politics revisited: Evidence of an ideological asymmetry in conspiratorial thinking. Political Psychology.

van der Linden, S., & Roozenbeek, J. (2020). Psychological inoculation against fake news. In R. Greifeneder, M. Jaffé, E.J. Newman, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), The psychology of fake news: Accepting, sharing, and correcting misinformation (pp. 147-169). London, UK: Psychology Press.

Van Bavel, J. J., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., Crockett, M. J., Crum, A. J., Douglas, K. M., Druckman, J. N. Drury, J., Dube, O., Ellemers, N., Finkel, E. J., Fowler, J. H., Gelfand, M., Han, S., Haslam, S. A., Jetten, J., Kitayama, S., Mobbs, D., Napper, L. E., Packer, D. J., Pennycook, G., Peters, E., Petty, R. E., Rand, D. G., Reicher, S. D., Schnall, S., Shariff, A., Skitka, L. J., Smith, S. S., Sunstein, C. R., Tabri, N., Tucker, J. A., van der Linden, S., Van Lange, P. A. M., Weeden, K. A., Wohl, M. J. A., Zaki, J., Zion, S. & Willer, R. (in press). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour 4, 460-471.

Jia, L., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Green but not altruistic warm-glow predicts conservation behavior. Conservation Science and Practice 2, e211.

Ruggeri, K., Alí, S.,  Berge, M.L., Bertoldo, G., Bjørndal, L., Cortijos-Bernabeu, A.,….…..van der Linden, S., & Folke, T. (2020). Replicating patterns of Prospect Theory for decision under risk. Nature Human Behaviour 4, 622-633.

van der Bles, A.M., van der Linden, S., Freeman, A., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2020). The effects of communicating uncertainty on public trust in facts and numbers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (14), 7672-7683.

Goldberg, M., Marlon, J., Wang, X., van der Linden, S., & Leiserowitz, A. (2020). Oil and gas companies invest in legislators that vote against the environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (10), 5111-5112..

Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., & Nygren, T. (2020). Prebunking interventions based on inoculation theory can reduce susceptibility to misinformation across cultures. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review 1(2).

van der Linden, S., Panagopoulos, C., & Roozenbeek, J. (2020). You Are Fake News: Political Bias in Perceptions of Fake News. Media, Culture, & Society, 42(3), 460-470.

Basol, M., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Good news about Bad News: Gamified inoculation boosts confidence and cognitive immunity against fake news. Journal of Cognition, 3(1), 1-9.

Goldberg, M., & van der Linden, S. (2020). The importance of heterogeneity in large-scale replications. Journal of Social and Political Psychology 8(1), 25-29

Reynolds, J.P., Stautz, K., Piling, M., van der Linden, S., & Marteau, T. (2020). Communicating the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of government policies and its impact on public support: A systematic review with meta-analysis. Royal Society Open Science 7, 190522.

Goldberg, M., van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2019). Discussing global warming leads to greater acceptance of climate science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(30), 14804-14805..

Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2019). Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation. Nature Palgrave Communications 5, 65, 10.1057/s41599-019-0279-9.

van der Linden, S., & Lofstedt, R. (2019). Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society. London: Routledge (Earthscan).

van der Linden, S. (2019). Countering science denial. Nature Human Behaviour.

van der Bles, A.M., van der Linden, S., Freeman, A., Mitchell, J., Galvao, A., Zaval, L., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2019). Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers, and science. Royal Society Open Science 6, 181870.

Goldberg, M., van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., & Maibach, E. (2019). Perceived social consensus can reduce ideological biases on climate change. Environment and Behavior.

van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2019). Exposure to scientific consensus does not cause psychological reactance. Environmental Communication.

van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., & Maibach, E. (2019). The Gateway Belief Model: A Large-Scale Replication. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 62, 49-58.

Rosenthal, S., Hooley, J., Montoya, M., van der Linden, S., & Steshenko, Y. (2019). The Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale: A measure to distinguish narcissistic grandiosity from high self-esteem Assessment 27 (3), 487-507. Click here for NGS Scale.

Goldberg, M., van der Linden, S., Ballew, M., Rosenthal, S., & Leiserowitz, A. (2019). The role of anchoring in judgments about expert consensus. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 49(3), 192-200.

van der Linden, S., & Panagopoulos, C. (2018). The O'Reilly Factor: An ideological bias in judgments about sexual harassment. Personality and Individual Differences, 139, 198-201.

van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., & Maibach, E. (2018). Perceptions of scientific consensus predict later beliefs about the reality of climate change using cross-lagged panel analysis. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 60, 110-111.

van der Linden, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2018). How to combat distrust of science. In Return to Reason: The Science of Thought. New York, NY: Scientific American (Nature Springer). ISBN: 978-1-948933-03-2.

van der Linden, S. (2018). The future of behavioral insights: On the importance of socially situated nudges. Behavioural Public Policy, 2(2), 207-217.

Chryst, B., Marlon, J., van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., & Roser-Renouf, C. (2018). Global Warming’s “Six Americas Short Survey”: Audience Segmentation of Climate Change Views Using a Four Question Instrument. Environmental Communication 12 (8), 1109-1122. Yale segmentation app available here.

Brick, C., & van der Linden, S. (2018). Yawning at the Apocalypse. The Psychologist 31, 30-35 (reprinted as "Psychologists and the largest social dilemma in history in the European Bulletin of Social Psychology 30, 2).

Lewandowsky, S., van der Linden, S., & Cook, J. (2018). Can we inoculate against fake news? CREST Security Review 8, p.10 (reprinted in ESRC Society Now 33, p.16).

Zhang, B., van der Linden, S., Mildenberger, M., Marlon, J., Howe, P., & Leiserowitz, A. (2018). Experimental effects of climate messages vary geographically. Nature Climate Change 8, 370-374.

Cook, J., van der Linden, S., Lewandowsky, S., & Maibach, E. (2018). The Consensus Handbook. doi:10.13021/G8MM6P.

Jost, J.T., van der Linden, S., Panagopoulos, C., & Hardin, C. (2018). Ideological asymmetries in conformity, desire for shared reality, and the spread of misinformation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 23, 77-83.

Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2018). The Fake News Game: Actively Inoculating Against the Risk of Misinformation. Journal of Risk Research, 22(5), 570-580.

Weinschenk, A., Panagopoulos, C., Drabot, K., & van der Linden, S. (2018). Gender and social conformity: Do men and women respond differently to social pressure to vote? Social Influence 13(2), 53-64.

van der Linden, S. (2018). Warm glow is associated with low but not high-cost sustainable behaviour. Nature Sustainability 1, 28-30.

Marlon, J., van der Linden, S., Howe, P., Leiserowitz, A., Woo, L., & Broad, K. (2018). Detecting local environmental change: The role of experience in shaping risk judgments about global warming. Journal of Risk Research.

van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., Cook, J., Leiserowitz, A., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Inoculating against misinformation. Science 358(6367), 1141-1142.

van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., & Maibach, E. (2018). Scientific agreement can neutralize the politicization of facts. Nature Human Behaviour 2, 2-3. doi: 10.1038/s41562-017-0259-2.

van der Linden, S. (2017). Beating the hell out of fake news. The Proceedings of the Conway Hall Ethical Society 122(6), 4-7.

van der Linden, S., & Chryst, B. (2017). No Need for Bayes Factors: A Fully Bayesian Evidence Synthesis. Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, 3:12. Bayesian Evidence Synthesis Tool Available Here.

Rugerri, K., Yoon, H., Ondrej, K., van der Linden, S., & Muennig, P. (2017). Policy and population behavior in the age of Big Data. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 18, 1-6.

van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., Cook, J., Leiserowitz, A., Ranney, M., Lewandowsky, S., Arvai, J., & Weber, E.U. (2017). Culture vs. Cognition is a False Dilemma. Nature Climate Change 7, 457-457.

van der Linden, S. (2017). The nature of viral altruism and how to make it stick. Nature Human Behaviour 1, 0041.

van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., & Maibach, E. (2017). Inoculating the Public Against Misinformation about Climate Change. Global Challenges 1(2). doi: 10.1002/gch2.201600008.

van der Linden, S. (2017). Determinants and Measurement of Climate Change Risk Perception, Worry, and Concern. In M. Nisbet (Ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of Climate Change Communication (pp. 369-401). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Pearson, A., & van der Linden, S. (2017). When does deprivation motivate future-oriented thinking? The case of climate change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40, e336.

van der Linden, S. (2017). The role of climate in human aggression and violence: Towards a broader conception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40, 37-38.

Panagopolous, C., & van der Linden, S. (2016). Conformity to implicit social pressure: The role of political identity. Social Influence 11(3), 177-184.

van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2015). Improving public engagement with climate change: Five “best practice” insights from psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(6), 758-763.

van der Linden, S. (2015). Intrinsic motivation and pro-environmental behaviour. Nature Climate Change, 5(7), 612-613.

van der Linden, S., & Rosenthal, S. A. (2015). Measuring narcissism with a single question? A replication and extension of the Single-Item Narcissism Scale (SINS). Personality and Individual Differences, 90, 238-241.

van der Linden, S. (2015). A conceptual critique of the cultural cognition thesis. Science Communication, 38(1), 128-138.

van der Linden, S., & Chryst, B. (2015). Why the "new statistics" isn't new. The Psychologist, 28(8), 610.

van der Linden, S. (2015). The conspiracy-effect: Exposure to conspiracy theories (about global warming) decreases pro-social behavior and science acceptance. Personality and Individual Differences, 87, 171-173.

van der Linden, S., Clarke, C., & Maibach, E. (2015). Highlighting consensus among medical scientists increases public support for vaccines: Evidence from a randomized experiment. BMC Public Health, 15(1), 1207.

van der Linden, S. (2015). The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions: Towards a comprehensive model. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 41, 112-124.

van der Linden, S. L., Leiserowitz, A. A., Feinberg, G. D., & Maibach, E. W. (2015). The scientific consensus on climate change as a gateway belief: Experimental evidence. PloS ONE, 10(2), e0118489.

van der Linden, S. (2015). Green prison programmes, recidivism, and mental health: A primer. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 25(5), 338-342.

van der Linden, S. (2014). On the relationship between personal experience, affect and risk perception: The case of climate change. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(5), 430-440.

 van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Feinberg, G., & Maibach, E. (2014). How to communicate the scientific consensus on climate change: Plain facts, pie charts or metaphors? Climatic Change, 126(1-2), 255-262.

van der Linden, S. (2013). A response to Paul Dolan. In A. Oliver (Ed.), Behavioural Public Policy (pp. 209-215). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.

van der Linden, S. (2013). Exploring beliefs about bottled water and intentions to reduce consumption: The dual-effect of social norm activation and persuasive information. Environment and Behavior, 47(5), 526-550.

van der Linden, S. (2011). Charitable intent: A moral or social construct? A revised theory of planned behavior model. Current Psychology, 30(4), 355-374.

Professor of Social Psychology in Society
Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory
Fellow in Psychology, Churchill College
sander.vanderlinden[at]psychol.cam.ac.uk

Contact Details

Old Cavendish Lab, Free School Lane
@Sander_vdLinden (twitter)
***NOT TAKING STUDENTS 2023***
+44 (0)1223 (3)30398 (Department)
Classifications: 
Person keywords: 
Social Norms, Influence and Cognition
Risk, Judgement and Decision-Making
Prosociality, Cooperation and Altruism
Environmental Psychology and Well-Being
Available for consultancy