Professor Sander van der Linden FPsyS FAcSS

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, 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. He co-developed the award-winning fake news game, Bad News, which has been played by millions of people around the world and he regularly advises governments and social media companies on how to combat the spread of misinformation. He is among the top 1% of highly cited social scientists worldwide and has published over 200 research papers. Prof van der Linden was the recipient of the 2024 Cambridge Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Impact. He currently serves on the UK Cabinet Office National Security Risk Assessment, the Office of National Statistics Citizen Data Advisory Group and the World Health Organization’s Infodemic Alliance. His work is regularly featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, and the BBC and he has been described by WIRED magazine as one of “15 top thinkers” and by Fast Company Design as one “four heroes who are defending digital democracy online”. He is the author of the award-winning book; FOOLPROOF: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity (HarperCollins/WW Norton), which was named one of Nature's Top Science Books, a Financial Times Book of the Year and recipient of the Best Book Prize from the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Harvard Shorenstein Goldsmith Book Prize. His latest book, the Psychology of Misinformation (2024) was a Cambridge Press Book of the Year 2024. Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE. His research uses a variety of techniques, including virtual reality, lab studies, computational science, big data, social neuroscience, and large-scale interventions.