[4] He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science[5] in 2014 with a thesis titled "The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions, intentions and behaviours: a national study",[6] and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the department of psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University.

[13][14] The research draws on inoculation theory where, following the biomedical analogy, forewarning people and exposing them to a severely weakened dose of fake news can generate psychological resistance against it.

In the first step, perceptions of agreement among a group of influential referents (e.g. experts) influence key private attitudes that people may hold about an issue (e.g., that global warming is human-caused).

[30] Van der Linden and others have surveyed more than 5,000 Americans online about their political preferences, asking them to respond to questions developed to measure conspiratorial thinking and paranoia.

Van der Linden speculates that this may reflect strong identification with conservative groups and values, and attempts to manage uncertainty.