How to counter political extremism and misinformation – Cambridge Festival

Sander van der Linden 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 and co-developed the award-winning fake news game, Bad News, which has been played by millions of people around the world. He is ranked among the top 1% of highly cited social scientists worldwide and has published over 150 research papers. Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE. He is the author of FOOLPROOF: Why we fall for misinformation and how to build immunity, published in February 2023.

Dr Leor Zmigrod is a political psychologist and neuroscientist whose research investigates the cognitive and emotional characteristics that make individuals susceptible to ideological extremism. Leor was a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University and her research has been recognized through numerous awards including Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, the Women of the Future Science Award, the Glushko Prize in Cognitive Science, amongst others. Leor’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, New Scientist and Financial Times and she frequently advises policymakers on developing evidence-based counter-extremism policies. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Ideological Brain on how ideologies coerce human brains and how to unchain the mind from toxic dogmas.