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Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab

Department of Psychology
 

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. His research papers have 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). 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 100 research papers. 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 former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology (2018-2021) and author of; FOOLPROOF: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity (HarperCollins/WW Norton). Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE.