Sander van der Linden: A Psychological Vaccine Against Misinformation about Climate Change

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.

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• 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.