Abstract
Foolproof educates readers in an engaging way about the traits, consequences, and remedies of misinformation, elevating awareness of these issues across diverse social media content. While the book’s primary audience is non-experts, it is useful for academics and practitioners who are not deeply versed in the literature on misinformation or the methodological approaches used in social psychological research. The book is rich with anecdotes and historical examples that make it interesting and accessible to any reader. While most research in this field suggests that misinformation can be combated simply through fact checking, van der Linden offers a potentially more robust solution—psychological inoculation—that is both preventive and therapeutic. The theory of psychological inoculation, first developed by psychologist William J. McGuire, parallels the logic of vaccines. The theory is that just as vaccines train the immune system by introducing weakened or dead virus strains, exposure to a mild dose of fake news can help people develop mental antibodies against misinformation.
The book outlines the issues related to misinformation and offers actionable solutions. It systematically and strategically educates readers step by step, from introducing the concepts of misinformation and disinformation to training readers on tactics to help them avoid falling for these practices. In Part One, the author explains how the brain operates and how cognitive biases can lead people to fall for conspiracy theories and fake news, especially when the content is politicized. In Part Two, van der Linden illustrates the dissemination and consequences of misinformation in the context of key historical events, such as the Iraq War, the Wakefield vaccine controversy, and the Holocaust. Through these examples, the author demonstrates that misinformation has been strategically employed at times and has led to dire consequences. Moreover, the author enlightens readers on how social media exacerbates misinformation problems, creating echo chambers and filter bubbles through algorithms that facilitate the rapid and wide transmission of fake news. In Part Three, van der Linden describes the experiments conducted by his research team to extend the theory of psychological inoculation (van der Linden et al., 2017). Their results showed that participants who had been psychologically inoculated by being “forewarned of impending misinformation” (p. 186) and “prebunked” (p. 186)—i.e., pre-emptively informed about potential misinformation attacks and provided with a counterargument—demonstrated higher likelihood of maintaining their beliefs about correct information. Specifically, they continued to believe in the presence of a scientific consensus on climate change, despite having been exposed to misinformation via the Global Warming Petition Project.
Also in Part Three, the author breaks down the DNA of misinformation by defining it as having six characteristics, dubbed the Six Degrees of Manipulation—or the DEPICT manipulation framework (p. 196). The acronym stands for discrediting, emotion, polarization, impersonation, conspiracy, and trolling. The author’s research team integrates this framework into a game they developed called “Bad News,” which aims to psychologically inoculate users by training them to recognize the six manipulation tactics of misinformation creators; individuals who played the game found fake news less trustworthy, compared to those who did not play it. The author then vividly describes his collaborations with YouTube, the U.K. government, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization to combat misinformation by applying psychological inoculation theory to help the public recognize misinformation. While the collaborations’ primary goal was to protect the public from COVID-19 misinformation, the pervasive nature of misinformation suggests that governments and international organizations should continue to extend such campaigns beyond this specific issue.
This book is particularly relevant in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). First, amid concerns about AI replacing humans, van der Linden demonstrates agentic decision-making processes in his own research, driven by his passion for reducing misinformation. By sharing the entire value chain of his research, from the incipient stages of extending McGuire’s theory of psychological inoculation to real-life applications of the theory, the book exhibits the value of human work driven by intention and purpose. Second, the author explains that the features and nature of social media exacerbate the problem because dissemination of misinformation happens faster and has a wider reach via social media compared to more-traditional forms of media. The recent use of AI for content creation on social media will aggravate this problem as content can now be generated more efficiently with the technology. In this vein, van der Linden’s research is both timely and crucial as it offers essential strategies to address and mitigate this pressing issue.
One blind spot that the author exhibits is an overreliance on social psychological research. In short, most research in this area assumes that for a voter or supporter to follow a politician or leader, they must believe the misinformation to be true. Therefore, the book is dedicated to explaining some of the key conditions that would lead one to accept as truth what others see as misinformation. By holding firm to this assumption, the author ignores the possibility that misinformation might be recognized as such (i.e., a lie or untruth) and still generate support. Recent studies in sociology have highlighted that sharing misinformation can generate support even when the recipients acknowledge that the misinformation is, indeed, false or spreads untruths (Hahl, Kim, and Zuckerman Sivan, 2018; cf. Galak and Critcher, 2023). Similar research shows that members of both major political parties in the U.S. are willing to accept lies by politicians of their own party even when these members know that the information has no basis in fact (Kim et al., 2024). In these studies, constituents acknowledge that the politician is lying and support the politician anyway. In other words, these studies show that misinformation need not be understood as truth for it to generate political support.
Assuming that misinformation must be understood as truth to be supported not only understates the problem of misinformation; it also raises questions about the effectiveness of the author’s solution: psychological inoculation. By highlighting the conditions under which politicians are seen as more authentic and trustworthy when they share misinformation (Hahl, Kim, and Zuckerman Sivan, 2018; Galak and Critcher, 2023; Langdon et al., 2024), research indicates that misinformation is not only not penalized but can be prized among politicians in the right conditions. These conditions raise the question of whether psychological inoculation is a relevant solution for partisans who refuse to be deterred by politicians’ false statements.
Beyond this point, two issues are particularly important for organizational scholars seeking to address the issues of misinformation as discussed by van der Linden and others cited above. First, as we consider the roots of misinformation’s appeal, the cost of acquiring information has decreased significantly due to recent technological developments aimed at increasing the amount of content accessible to a wide audience. But little progress has been made in helping individuals validate the quality of information. The constant stream of information, and its dubious sources, increases our need to validate any information we receive while simultaneously decreasing our ability to validate all of it. Our inability to validate much of anything on our own means that we are left uncertain about what is true and what isn’t or whether truth even matters in politics and elsewhere. Instead, could technology be used to help validate information for audiences? To this point, AI holds the potential to reduce information-validation costs by streamlining searches and enabling automated fact-checking through cross-referencing of large datasets.
A second and related issue is the role that social media platforms play in this process. Van der Linden talks at length about this in Part Two but does not provide an organizational solution. Citing the work of Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the author describes in detail the role that Facebook played in not only facilitating misinformation flows but also directing the misinformation to those who might be most susceptible to believing it. Is there a role for private enterprise or government to regulate this behavior by social media platforms?
Perhaps there is even a role for organizational scholars to both describe the behavior and design remedies to it. In the book, van der Linden both describes the role of social networks through social media and touches on the topic of networks more broadly. Organizational scholars have long led the charge in analyzing networks and understanding contagion through network formations (e.g., Centola, 2010; Aven, 2015; Davis, 2023), so there is potential to apply such understandings to this topic. As we consider social networks, more research can be done on the ways in which cultural bubbles—how they form and what is shared within them—serve as an important structural formation that can contribute to the prevalence and acceptance of misinformation.
From a social psychological perspective, Foolproof articulates the ways in which misinformation is a major influence in society today. Access to information is high. Now it is time to work on closing the gap between the low cost of information access and the high cost of validating information.
