Chapter 37: Further Reading — Cognitive Defense and Inoculation

Foundational Research Papers

1. Van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., & Maibach, E. (2017). "Inoculating the public against misinformation about climate change." Global Challenges, 1(2). The landmark paper establishing that inoculation can protect climate change attitudes against misinformation. Essential reading for understanding both the mechanism and the evidence base for prebunking. Van der Linden's clearest statement of the inoculation framework in a peer-reviewed context.

2. Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2019). "The fake news game: Actively inoculating against the risk of misinformation." Journal of Risk Research, 22(5), 570-580. The primary evaluation study of the Bad News game. Details the experimental design, the six manipulation technique badges, and the key findings on manipulation recognition improvement and absence of generalized skepticism. Essential for understanding what the game actually shows.

3. Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A.A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D.G. (2021). "Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online." Nature, 592, 590–595. The flagship accuracy nudge paper. A methodologically rigorous study showing that a simple accuracy prompt reduces misinformation sharing by approximately 15% at scale. One of the most practically important findings for platform design in the misinformation research literature.

4. Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). "Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information." Teachers College Record, 121(11). The core paper on lateral reading from SHEG. Establishes the contrast between lateral reading (what fact-checkers do) and vertical reading (what historians and students do), and explains why the former outperforms the latter against well-designed misinformation.

Books on Inoculation and Cognitive Defense

5. Van der Linden, S. (2023). Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity (W.W. Norton) Van der Linden's popular book synthesizing the inoculation theory research for general readers. Accessible, evidence-grounded, and containing more detail on the mechanism and the applications than is possible in a textbook chapter. The definitive popular treatment of the prebunking approach.

6. Wineburg, S. (2018). Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone) (University of Chicago Press) Wineburg's book on historical thinking in the digital age, including the civic online reasoning research. Provides context for the lateral reading findings in the broader project of educating citizens for digital information environments.

7. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Kahneman's accessible synthesis of dual-process research is the theoretical foundation for understanding why System 1 (fast, automatic) thinking is vulnerable to manipulation while System 2 (slow, deliberate) thinking is more resistant. Essential background for understanding the metacognitive approach to cognitive defense.

8. Pennycook, G., & Rand, D.G. (2021). "The Psychology of Fake News." Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(5), 388–402. A review paper synthesizing the research on misinformation susceptibility and the interventions that reduce it. More comprehensive than a single study, useful for understanding where the accuracy nudge findings fit in the broader picture of what we know about why people share misinformation.

Media Literacy and Education

9. Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2021). "Students' civic online reasoning: A national portrait." Educational Researcher, 50(8). Large-scale assessment data on how US students at every level evaluate online sources. Essential for understanding the scale of the problem that media literacy education is trying to address.

10. McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). "Can students evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning." Theory & Research in Social Education, 46(2). The SHEG paper on what students specifically fail to do when evaluating sources. Details the empirical basis for the curriculum redesign that lateral reading represents.

11. Jeong, S., Cho, H., & Hwang, Y. (2012). "Media literacy interventions: A meta-analytic review." Journal of Communication, 62(3), 454–472. The most comprehensive meta-analysis of media literacy interventions, covering programs from multiple decades. Provides the broader context for evaluating the knowledge-behavior gap that more recent procedural approaches (lateral reading, inoculation) are attempting to close.

Mindfulness and Technology

12. Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness (Bantam Books) The foundational text on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). While not about technology use specifically, this is the program whose adaptations have been studied in relation to technology behavior. Reading the original provides the context for understanding what MBSR is and why its effects generalize to technology use patterns.

13. Linardon, J., & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M. (2020). "Attrition and adherence in smartphone-delivered interventions for mental health problems: A systematic and meta-analytic review." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 88(1). Research on the relationship between mindfulness traits and problematic smartphone use, situated within the broader literature on smartphone interventions. Useful for understanding the evidence base for mindfulness as a technology regulation tool.

Critical Perspectives

14. Mihailidis, P., & Viotty, S. (2017). "Spreadable spectacle in digital culture: Civic expression, fake news, and the role of media literacies in 'post-fact' society." American Behavioral Scientist, 61(4). A critical examination of the limits of media literacy education, arguing that standard approaches treat misinformation as a knowledge problem when it is partly a motivation problem. Useful counterpoint to overly optimistic views of media literacy as a solution.