Professor Sander van der Linden

Sander van der Linden FPsyS FBPsS FAcSS 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 and human-technology and human-environment interaction. In particular, he is interested in the social influence and persuasion process and how adults (and adolescents) are influenced by (mis)information and gain resistance to persuasion and manipulation through psychological inoculation. He also researches the psychology of conspiracy theories, extremism, genAI, deepfakes, social networks, reasoning about evidence, and the public understanding of risk and uncertainty, particularly in the context of global challenges such as climate change and public health. His research uses a variety of techniques, from virtual reality to survey, neuro, and lab studies to computational social science, big data, and large-scale interventions.

He has published over 200 papers and is ranked among the top 1% of all social scientists worldwide (Clarivate ISI Highly Cited Researcher), the top 0.05% of all scientists according to impact (ScholarGPS) and among the top 2% across all scientific fields by Stanford University (Ioannidis, Boyack, & Baas, 2020, 2025). He's an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the British Psychological Society.

Prof van der Linden received the 2024 Cambridge Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Impact and the 2026 British Psychological Association President's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge. 

For OFFICIAL Biography please click HERE.

Books

His award-winning book FOOLPROOF: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity (HarperCollins/WW Norton, www.foolproofbook.com) has been translated into many languages and was listed by the BBC, Cosmopolitan, Apple, Men's Health, and Inc.com 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 a Stanford Business School Favorite Read.

Foolproof won the 2023 Psychology Book Prize from the British Psychological Society, the 2024 Harvard Goldsmith Book Prize, the 2024 Nautilus Book Award, the 2024 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association (APA), and the 2024 SPSP Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Psychology.

His latest academic book is The Psychology of Misinformation (CUP, 2024) with Jon Roozenbeek, which was named a Cambridge Press Book of the Year 2024. Other books include Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth World (with R. Löfstedt) and The Psychological Foundations of Climate Solutions (CUP, 2027) with Madalina Vlasceanu. 

Media

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

He was interviewed by Lesley Stahl on CBS 60 Minutes and featured on BBC's People Fixing the World and the National Academy of Science's "Decoding Deception" documentary.

For some viral TikTok videos explaining his research, see here, here and here. For his WHO campaign, see Insta and TikTok.

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:

• See here for interview on CBS 60 Minutes about misinformation
• For views on the social media ban proposal see Sky News segment, official university response and Nature piece.
• For his work in schools with kids please see BBC Panorama 
• How to Address Misinformation Without Censorship - TIME MAGAZINE
• For views on AI and disinformation (see WIRED 2024 prediction)
• National Academy of Science film (Decoding Deception)
• Profile in Science Magazine
• For views on recent debates on misinformation research (see op-ed in Scientific American and Chronicle)
• WIRED Profile (vaccine against fake news)
• A conversation with Jon Ronson on culture wars for BPS
• Why Misinformation Spreads Like a Virus (Scientific American)
• The man trying to save the world from conspiracy theories (Telegraph feature)
• Rolling Stone Feature on the "Disinformation Vaccine"
• Scientific American Q&A Interview on FOOLPROOF
• Columbia Journalism Review Q&A on FOOLPROOF
• FOOLPROOF interview in Hebrew (Calcalist)
• Op-Eds on Prebunking in The Guardian (older here).
• Op-Ed in Daily Express on Conspiracy Theories
• Op-Ed in the New York Times
• Why schools should prepare kids for misinformation (Telegraph)
• Q&A Interview for Discover Magazine
• Interview European Parliament
• Feature with PBS Newshour
• Deep Dive with BBC Future
• Misinformation and Tips for Organizations (FORBES)
• Globe and Mail (Canadian Feature on FOOLPROOF)
• Long-form interviews in Dutch (NRC, Volkskrant, Algemeen Dagblad, RTL NIeuws, Telegraaf, FD, Tijd, de Morgen)
• Cambridge Interview on the COVID-19 pandemic
• Churchill College Interview

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

He is dedicated to conducting psychological science in the public interest and frequently wrote 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 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, CDC, NHS, Royal Society, MoD/National Police, the World Bank, United Nations, WhatsApp/Meta, TEDx, Google, UK Cabinet Office, EU Commission, and the US State Department. He also consults regularly for the entertainment industry, particularly screenwriters and directors on shows related to psychology, extremism, and misinformation. 

Advisory and Boards

He is an appointed member of the UK National Security Risk Assessment Expert Group (BSEG), The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) College of Experts, the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), the Citizen Data Advisory Group for the National Statistician (ONS), and the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Infodemic Alliance. He also gives lectures for the National Intelligence community, Chiefs of Police, and the UK Defense Academy. In the past, he has collaborated with social media and technology companies on online safety and fighting misinformation having been a leading critic of their business model (e.g., see here). He has also given testimony to government bodies about regulation of online harms.

He serves on the advisory boards of the Council for Countering Online Disinformation, Prolific, and the National Teaching Institute's Centre for Digital Information Literacy in Schools. He is a member of Cambridge Neuroscience and an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial intelligence.

He also serves on the award committee for the Spinoza and Stevin Prize, the highest national research prize in the Netherlands administered by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

At Cambridge, Prof van der Linden is the Sustainability Lead for the School of Biology and serves on the Environmental Sustainability Strategy Committee (ESSC), which is a joint committee of the university's general board and council. Prof. van der Linden also sat 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-organizes the Cambridge Risk and Uncertainty Conference (RUC) and the Cambridge Disinformation Summit.

Awards and Fellowships

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 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 listed by Pacific Standard Magazine as one of the "30 Top Thinkers under 30".

He is a chartered psychologist (CPsychol), an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS),  Psychonomic Society (FPSyS), the British Psychological Society (FBPsS), the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), and a recipient of the United States President's Volunteer Service Award (Gold Medal).

His 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. 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. Cat Park, a game developed with the U.S. State Department to help people spot political fake news during elections won the 2023 Games for Change Award (Best Civics Game). 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.

In 2024, van der Linden was the recipient of the University of Cambridge Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Impact and Engagement. In 2026, he was the recipient of the British Psychological Association President's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge. 

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 currently a consulting editor for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), serves on the editorial board of Nature Scientific Reports where he edits collections on misinformation, a consulting editor for Behavioral Science and Policy, a board member of Disinformation, Current Research in Social and Ecological Psychology, Advances in Psychology, Journal of Risk Research, and is also section editor of the psychology and behavioural science area for PLOS Climate. Previously he was on the board of Personality and Individual Differences and Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.

Prior to Cambridge, Prof. van der Linden was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, the 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).

You can follow him on BlueSky @Sander_vdLinden and Linkedin