Schools ‘should teach children how to spot conspiracy theories’

Students should be taught how to counter conspiracy theories on the school curriculum, a University of Cambridge scholar has said.

Prof Sander van der Linden, an expert on social psychology, said that one of the solutions to conspiracist thinking could be to “implement this stuff in national education curriculums”.

Speaking about his new book, Foolproof, at the Chalke Valley History Festival in Wiltshire, he added that Finland scored highly on the ability to spot misinformation and that this was “because they are preparing kids, you know teenagers, on how to spot propaganda”.

“I mean, historically, they’ve shared a border with Russia for a long time – so they’re keenly aware of the dangers of propaganda,” he added.

“And I think we would probably be well served by making sure again – not telling our kids and our students what they need to believe, but preparing them to spot the techniques of manipulation from as early on as possible and that will maybe help.”

In 2019, the OECD’s programme for international student assessment study found that teenagers in east Asia were more adept at distinguishing between fact and fiction than their British counterparts.

Overall, the study found that fewer than one in 10 students globally could determine between fact and fiction.

The Finnish government introduced an anti-fake news initiative in its schools from 2014. The country also tops the Media Literacy Index, an index of 41 countries across Europe which measures their vulnerability to fake news.

Prof Van der Linden said that the human brain processed repeated information more quickly than new information, which allowed them to be manipulated into believing fake news.

He said: “If you’ve heard something before, the brain is literally faster at processing that new information and it uses that as a signal for veracity. 

“So that works well in a number of ways. But people spreading misinformation can take advantage of that. And that’s true for everyone.” 

He said that key elements of conspiracist thinking involved being incoherent or contradictory, that they involved suspicion of others, and the belief that the schemes or conspiracies had “nefarious intent” and would usually involve someone as a “persecuted victim”.

He added that it was important to almost inoculate society against conspiracy theories as one would with a virus, and that the growth of deepfakes and ChatGPT capabilities could amplify the spread of disinformation.

‘Magical thinking a gateway to conspiracy theories’

Prof Van der Linden said that spiritual belief, or “magical thinking”, could serve as a gateway to a conspiracist mindset.

“Other forms of magical thinking are superstition. Things you see on TikTok now with  younger people is ‘manifesting’, so the idea that if you think positive thoughts, you’re going to concretely shift things – so maybe I don’t want this person to break up with me,” he said.

“So if I say it a hundred times on TikTok, it’s not going to happen. And you see thousands of kids doing this, and I think partly it’s because the world is in not such a nice place. 

“People need a way to feel positive and that’s great. But this kind of magical thinking is a gateway to conspiracy theories.”