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Misinformation, Disinformation, and Psychological Inoculation

Speaker: Sander van der Linden
Affiliation: University of Cambridge, Social Decision Making Lab
Event: Kyiv School of Economics Solidarity Lectures
Year: 2026
Video ID: 61e6x9pjHAA

TL;DR

Van der Linden argues that reactive fact-checking fails to scale and leaves misinformation's psychological influence intact. Instead, he proposes psychological inoculation: preemptively exposing people to weakened examples of misinformation techniques before they encounter the real thing, building cognitive resistance. He presents empirical evidence from the Bad News game—a gamified intervention that teaches six core manipulation tactics (polarization, impersonation, conspiracy, trolling, emotion exploitation, discrediting)—and shows that the approach works across demographics and persists over time. He frames this as part of a broader shift from detecting false claims to teaching people to recognize and downgrade the reliability of content that uses manipulative techniques.

Key claims

Fact-checking doesn't eliminate misinformation from memory. Meta-analyses show that even when people acknowledge a correction, they continue retrieving the original false claim from memory. This "continued influence of misinformation" occurs because people fail to integrate corrections into their mental models, and the sheer volume of misinformation overwhelms the capacity to fact-check everything.

Disinformation as distraction, not deception. Shallow fakes (videos presented out of context, repurposed footage from other conflicts) are often poorly executed—easily debunked by examining tank markings or metadata. Van der Linden argues the real purpose is to flood the information space with cheap fake content, keeping fact-checkers busy and unable to focus on high-stakes disinformation.

Psychological inoculation is a scalable alternative. Inspired by medical inoculation, the framework exposes people to weakened doses of misinformation techniques in advance, triggering their psychological immune system. A forewarning that manipulation is possible activates critical attention; preemptive refutation of a weak example builds cognitive resistance to stronger future attacks.

Six core manipulation techniques underlie most misinformation: Polarization (pitting groups against each other), impersonation (fake experts, deepfakes, account spoofing), conspiracy thinking, trolling and ridicule, emotional exploitation (fear, outrage), and discrediting (attacking the credibility of opponents). If people are inoculated against these techniques, they develop broad-spectrum immunity even to novel claims.

The Bad News game teaches inoculation through interactive gameplay. Players step into the role of a disinformation creator, experiencing the mechanics of spreading false content and manipulation. They encounter the six techniques in fictional but realistic scenarios (based on real events like the Warren Buffett Twitter impersonation). Post-game, people rate fake news as significantly less reliable, while maintaining normal reliability judgments for real news.

Effects are robust across demographics and persist over time. Randomized trials show the intervention works equally for left-wing and right-wing participants, younger and older adults, higher and lower education. Importantly, effects persist weeks after exposure, not just hours—a critical test for real-world relevance.

Pre-bunking the Ukraine conflict via intelligence release. The U.S. government preemptively disclosed Russian invasion plans and the fake propaganda video (staged attacks by Ukrainian troops) before the invasion occurred. Van der Linden frames this as a large-scale application of inoculation theory: preparing publics and NATO for the shallow fakes that would later saturate the information space.

Methods and evidence

Inoculation theory framework: - Originated with Bill McGuire during the Korean War, seeking to explain (and prevent) "brainwashing" of American POWs - The analogy: inject a weakened pathogen to trigger antibodies; inject a weakened misinformation technique to trigger cognitive defenses - Two psychological mechanisms: a forewarning (activates attention) and a preemptive refutation (provides cognitive tools)

Bad News game design: - Interactive social-media simulator with fictional but realistic scenarios - Players are rewarded for followers and credibility as they spread false information - Game includes the six manipulation techniques, each illustrated with realistic examples - Post-game assessment: players rate novel headlines for reliability

Empirical results: - First study (organic viral launch): 15,000 participant pairs, pre-post within-subjects design. Fake-news headlines rated significantly less reliable after playing; real news unchanged. - Randomized trial (Tetris control): Bad News group found fake news less reliable and gained confidence in their own truth-discernment; control group showed no change. - Longitudinal replication: effects persist across weeks, not just hours.

Connections

Notes

This talk is significant for reframing misinformation defense as a preventive problem, not a reactive one. Most research focuses on detection or fact-checking; van der Linden's psychological inoculation approach targets psychological resilience. The Bad News game demonstrates that gamification and interactive experience are effective teaching tools, moving beyond passive media literacy lectures.

The distinction between shallow fakes (poorly executed but numerous) and sophisticated deepfakes is particularly relevant to understanding disinformation campaigns. Van der Linden's insight—that the volume and distraction are the point, not the persuasiveness of individual pieces—reframes the problem from "can we fact-check faster?" to "can we make people psychologically resistant?"

The robustness of effects across demographics and over time is crucial. If inoculation worked only for educated audiences or only lasted hours, it would be a curiosity, not a scalable intervention. The evidence suggests both broad reach and practical durability.

The application to Ukraine—preemptively disclosing Russian invasion plans and fake propaganda videos—shows how inoculation theory can scale to geopolitical communication and intelligence operations. This is one of the clearest real-world validations of the theory outside the lab.