̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Sander van der Linden

Researchers celebrated at the Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement

zs332 — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 08:09:41 +0000

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement, formerly the Vice-Chancellor's Award, are held annually to recognise exceptional achievement, innovation, and creativity in developing research engagement and impact plans with significant economic, social, and cultural potential. Awarded in 3 categories, the winners for 2024 are:

Established Academic

Winner: Professor Sander van der Linden (Department of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences and Churchill College) and his team at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab (Team application)

Project: A psychological vaccine against misinformation

Professor Sander van der Linden and team have developed a novel approach to countering the spread of harmful misinformation. This ‘psychological vaccine’ resulted in award-winning public impact tools that have shown millions of people how to spot fake news online. These games have been adopted by the World Health Organization, United Nations, UK Government and Google, and led to key policy changes in the EU Digital Services Act.

Early Career Researcher

Winner: Dr Gabriel Okello (Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, School of Technology)

Project: Applying multidisciplinary, collaborative approaches to tackle air pollution in rapidly urbanising African cities

̽��ֱ��project catalysed Uganda’s first-ever air quality standards, advancing policy and public health. It drove transformative growth in the e-mobility sector and battery-swapping stations. ̽��ֱ��Clean Air Network was established as a multi-regional community of practice for air quality management across Africa. ̽��ֱ��platform now provides real-time air quality data enabling evidence-based decision-making in Uganda and 8 other African countries.

Collaboration Award

Winner:

Lead: Professor Paul Fletcher (Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine, Clare College), Dr Dervila Glynn (Cambridge Neuroscience IRC), Dominic Matthews (Ninja Theory Ltd), Sharon Gilfoyle (Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust)

Project: Representing psychosis in video games: communicating clinical science and tackling stigma

This work draws together expertise in video game design and clinical neuroscience, with lived experience of mental illness to co-produce two award-winning video games vividly conveying the nature of altered experience of reality in a character with psychosis. Within conversations around mental health, psychosis is neglected and highly stigmatised.

In creating a powerful character and telling her story through gameplay, the project has enabled sensitive and thoughtful conversations about psychosis, and mental illness in general. It has had a measurably positive impact on stigma.

More about the Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement

Find out more about the winning projects and meet our runners-up.

From helping to inoculate the public against misinformation to tackling air pollution in rapidly urbanising African cities, researchers from across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge were honoured at the Cambridge Awards on 3 February.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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̽��ֱ��Cambridge Awards 2024 for Research Impact and Engagement

zs332 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 10:27:01 +0000

Meet the winner of the Cambridge Awards 2024 for Research Impact and Engagement and learn more about their projects.

‘Manifest’ is Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 09:03:53 +0000

‘Manifest’ was looked up almost 130,000 times on the Cambridge Dictionary website, making it one of the most-viewed words of 2024.

̽��ֱ��word jumped from use in the self-help community and on social media to being widely used across mainstream media and beyond, as celebrities such as singer Dua Lipa, Olympic sprinter Gabby Thomas and England striker Ollie Watkins spoke of manifesting their success in 2024.

Mentions of it gained traction during the pandemic and have grown in the years since, especially on TikTok and other social media, where millions of posts and videos used the hashtag #manifest.

They use ‘to manifest’ in the sense of: ‘to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen’. Yet, manifesting is an unproven idea that grew out of a 100-year-old spiritual philosophy movement.

Wendalyn Nichols, Publishing Manager of the Cambridge Dictionary, said: “When we choose a Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year, we have three considerations: What word was looked up the most, or spiked? Which one really captures what was happening in that year? And what is interesting about this word from a language point of view?

“‘Manifest’ won this year because it increased notably in lookups, its use widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time.”

However experts warn that ‘manifesting’ has no scientific validity, despite its popularity. It can lead to risky behaviour or the promotion of false and dangerous beliefs, such as that diseases can be simply wished away.

“Manifesting is what psychologists call ‘magical thinking’ or the general illusion that specific mental rituals can change the world around us," said Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� social psychologist Professor Sander van der Linden, author of ̽��ֱ��Psychology of Misinformation.

“Manifesting gained tremendous popularity during the pandemic on TikTok with billions of views, including the popular 3-6-9 method which calls for writing down your wishes three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before bed. This procedure promotes obsessive and compulsive behaviour with no discernible benefits. But can we really blame people for trying it, when prominent celebrities have been openly ‘manifesting’ their success?

‘Manifesting’ wealth, love, and power can lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment. Think of the dangerous idea that you can cure serious diseases simply by wishing them away," said Van der Linden.

“There is good research on the value of positive thinking, self-affirmation, and goal-setting. Believing in yourself, bringing a positive attitude, setting realistic goals, and putting in the effort pays off because people are enacting change in the real world. However, it is crucial to understand the difference between the power of positive thinking and moving reality with your mind – the former is healthy, whereas the latter is pseudoscience.”

‘Manyfest’, manifest destiny, and manifestos

̽��ֱ��600-year history of the word ‘manifest’ shows how the meanings of a word can evolve.

̽��ֱ��oldest sense – which Geoffrey Chaucer spelled as ‘manyfest’ in the 14th century – is the adjective meaning ‘easily noticed or obvious’.

In the mid-1800s, this adjective sense was used in American politics in the context of “manifest destiny”, the belief that American settlers were clearly destined to expand across North America.

Chaucer also used the oldest sense of the verb ‘manifest’, ‘to show something clearly, through signs or actions’. Shakespeare used manifest as an adjective in ̽��ֱ��Merchant of Venice: ‘For it appears, by manifest proceeding, that...thou hast contrived against the very life of the defendant’.

̽��ֱ��verb is still used frequently in this way: for example, people can manifest their dissatisfaction, or symptoms of an illness can manifest themselves. Lack of confidence in a company can manifest itself through a fall in share price.

̽��ֱ��meaning of making something clear is reflected in the related noun 'manifesto': a ‘written statement of the beliefs, aims, and policies of an organisation, especially a political party’ – a word that also resonated in 2024 as scores of nations, including the United Kingdom and India, held elections where parties shared manifestos.

Other words of 2024

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Dictionary is the world’s most popular dictionary for learners of the English language. Increases and spikes in lookups reflect global events and trends. Beyond “manifest”, other popular terms in 2024 included:

brat: a child, especially one who behaves badly

“Brat” went viral in the summer of 2024 thanks to pop artist Charli XCX’s album of the same name about nonconformist women who reject a narrow and highly groomed female identity as portrayed on social media. (We weren’t the only dictionary publisher to notice this.)

demure: quiet and well behaved 

Influencer Jools Lebron’s satirical use of “demure” in a TikTok post mocking stereotypical femininity drove lookups in the Cambridge Dictionary.  After brat summer, we had a demure fall.

Goldilocks: used to describe a situation in which something is or has to be exactly right 

Financial reporters characterized India’s strong growth and moderate inflation as a Goldilocks economy in early 2024.

ecotarian: a person who only eats food produced or prepared in a way that does not harm the environment 

This term rose in overall lookups in 2024, reflecting growing interest in environmentally conscious living. 

New words, future entries?

All year round, Cambridge Dictionary editors track the English language as it changes. Newly emerging words that are being considered for entry are shared every Monday on the Cambridge Dictionary blog, About Words.

Words Cambridge began tracking in 2024 include:

quishing: the scam of phishing via QR code.

resenteeism: to continue doing your job but resent it. This blend of “resent” and “absenteeism” is appearing in business journalism.

gymfluencer: a social media influencer whose content is focused on fitness or bodybuilding.

cocktail party problem (also cocktail party effect): the difficulty of focusing on one voice when there are multiple speakers in the room. This term from audiology is now being used with reference to AI.

vampire: a vampire device or vampire appliance is one which uses energy even when not in use. This is a new, adjective sense of an existing word.

Adapted from the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press & Assessment website.

̽��ֱ��controversial global trend of manifesting has driven Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2024.

Why psychologists warn against manifesting - Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year

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̽��ֱ��Misinformation Susceptibility Test

fpjl2 — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 08:32:46 +0000

New 2-minute test launched; developed using ChatGPT technology and validated by expert panel and series of experiments involving thousands of participants. YouGov used the test in US polling, and found Americans know real from fake headlines two-thirds of the time, but worst performers are under-30s who spend most time online.

Cambridge researchers at the Hay Festival

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2023 08:43:07 +0000

Four Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academics will speak at the Hay Festival 2023 as part of the Cambridge Series.

Rewarding accuracy instead of partisan pandering reduces political divisions over the truth

fpjl2 — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 16:17:56 +0000

Offering a tiny cash reward for accuracy, or even briefly appealing to personal integrity, can increase people’s ability to tell the difference between misinformation and the truth, according to a new study.

̽��ֱ��findings suggest that fake news thrives on social media not only because people are tricked into believing it, but also due to a motivational imbalance: users have more incentive to get clicks and likes than to spread accurate content.

Social psychologists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and New York ̽��ֱ�� argue that their study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, highlights the “perverse incentives” driving shares on social media – particularly in “divisive political climates” such as the United States.

They say the psychological pull of pandering to one’s own “in-group” by attacking the other side of a social and political divide is a significant – and often neglected – factor for why so many believe and choose to spread misinformation, or disbelieve accurate news.

̽��ֱ��study involved four experiments with a total of over 3,300 people from the United States, with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. ̽��ֱ��researchers offered half of participants up to one US dollar if they correctly pointed out true or false headlines, and compared the results to those offered no incentive.

This tiny sum was enough to make people 31% better at discerning true from fake news. ̽��ֱ��best results came when participants were asked to identify accurate news that benefited the opposing political party.

In fact, the financial incentive reduced partisan division between Republican and Democrat over the truthfulness of news by around 30%. ̽��ֱ��majority of this shift occurred on the Republican side.

For example, the offer of up to a dollar made Republicans 49% more likely to report that the accurate Associated Press headline ‘Facebook removes Trump ads with symbols once used by Nazis’ was indeed true. A dollar made Democrats 20% more likely to report the Reuters headline 'Plant a trillion trees: U.S. Republicans offer fossil-fuel friendly climate fix' as accurate.

However, in another experiment, researchers inverted the set-up to “mirror the social media environment” by paying participants to identify the headlines likely to get the best reception from members of the same political party. ̽��ֱ��ability to spot misinformation reduced by 16%.

“This is not just about ignorance of facts among the public. It is about a social media business model that rewards the spread of divisive content regardless of accuracy,” said lead author Dr Steve Rathje, who conducted the work while he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

“By motivating people to be accurate instead of appealing to those in the same political group, we found greater levels of agreement between Republicans and Democrats about what is actually true.”

Previous research by the same team has shown that attacking political rivals is one of the most effective ways to go viral on Twitter and Facebook.

“Shifting the motivations to post on social media could help rebuild some of the shared reality lost to political polarisation in many nations, including the United States,” said senior author Prof Sander van der Linden, director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab.

In one of the study’s experiments, half the participants were simply exposed to a short piece of text reminding them that people value truth, and falsehoods can hurt reputations. They were also told they would receive feedback on accuracy rates.

While this did not have the same effect as a small pay out, it still increased the perceived accuracy of true but politically inconvenient news by 25% compared to a control group.

“A short piece of text nudging users to consider the social value of truth could be deployed at scale by social media corporations,” said van der Linden.

Jay Van Bavel, Professor of Psychology at New York ̽��ֱ�� and co-author of the study, said: “It is not possible to pay everyone on the internet to share more accurate information. However, we can change aspects of social media platform design to help motivate people to share content they know to be accurate.”

Providing incentives improved the accuracy of news judgements across the political spectrum, but had a much stronger effect on Republican voters.

̽��ֱ��team point to previous research showing that Republicans tend to believe in and share more misinformation than Democrats. In the latest study, payment incentives brought Republicans far closer to the accuracy levels of Democrats – shrinking the political divide.

“Recent lawsuits have revealed that Fox News hosts shared false claims about ‘stolen’ elections to retain viewers, despite privately disavowing these conspiracy theories. Republican media ecosystems have proved more willing to harness misinformation for profit in recent years,” said Van der Linden, author of the new book Foolproof: why we fall for misinformation and how to build immunity.

Researchers argue that the findings hold lessons for social media companies and the “perverse incentives” driving political polarisation online.

Shifting the motivations to post on social media could help rebuild some of the shared reality lost to political polarisation

Sander van der Linden

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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#CamFest Speaker Spotlight: Professor Sander van der Linden

zs332 — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 14:36:16 +0000

Foolproof: A psychological vaccine against fake news

fpjl2 — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 10:17:34 +0000

In an edited extract from his new book ‘Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity’, Prof Sander van der Linden takes us through his work to “inoculate” people against falling for fake news.