“Misinformation spreads like a virus,” explained Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., a 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 asked the question, “Is there a way to inoculate or immunize people?” His award-winning book Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity explores this topic using decades of research and on-the-ground experience advising governments and tech companies. He wrote the book to devise a new paradigm to help readers understand and defend themselves against a worldwide information infodemic. Van der Linden’s biography describes his body of research as looking at “how people process (mis)information, how it spreads in online networks, and how we can most effectively prebunk and inoculate people against false information.” He served on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) infodemic working group. He has won numerous awards for his research on human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS). He co-developed Bad News, an award-winning fake news game designed to improve people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques! This is an very important interview.

Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com

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