ISC 2021 Summer School – Cognitive Challenges of Climate Change ([ Ссылка ])

Day 5
Talk by Sander van der Linden: A Psychological Vaccine Against Misinformation about Climate Change
MC: Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez, MD, Ph.D Postdoctoral researcher, Neurophilosophy lab, McGill University

Abstract:
Much like a viral contagion, false information about climate change can spread rapidly from one individual to another. Moreover, once lodged in memory, misinformation is difficult to correct. Inoculation theory, therefore, offers a natural basis for developing a psychological ‘vaccine’ against the spread of fake news and misinformation about climate change. Specifically, in a series of randomized lab and field studies, we show that it is possible to pre-emptively “immunize” people against climate disinformation by pre-exposing them to severely weakened doses of the techniques that underlie its production. This psychological process helps people cultivate cognitive antibodies in a simulated social media environment. During the talk, I’ll showcase an award-winning real-world intervention (“Bad News”) we developed and empirically evaluated in 20 languages—with governments and social media companies—to help citizens around the world recognize and resist unwanted attempts to influence and mislead.

References:
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.
Maertens, R.,Anseel, F., &van der Linden, S. (2020).Combatting climate change misinformation: Evidence for longevity of inoculation and consensus messaging effects.Journal of Environmental Psychology,70, 101455.
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.
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.
Lewandowsky, S., &van der Linden, S. (2021).Countering misinformation and fake news through inoculation and prebunking.European Review of Social Psychology.

Bio:
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. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment, communication, and decision-making, especially in the context of climate change, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the Sage Early Career Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), the Frank Prize in Public Interest Research from the University of Florida and the Sir James Cameron Medal for the Public Understanding of Risk from the Royal College of Physicians. His research papers have appeared in journals such as PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour, and Nature Climate Change and received awards from organizations 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). His research is regularly featured in outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, and the BBC. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and the book “Risk and Uncertainty in a Post-Truth Society” (Routledge, 2019). Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE.

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