Social identity and the susceptibility to medical misinformation

Misinformation is widely recognised as a global threat, yet it continues to shape what people believe, share, and act upon. Previous research shows that social motivations are key to explaining why people engage with misinformation, but the area still remains under-investigated. My research indicates that when people share identity characteristics they perceive headlines as more accurate. The student will extend this ongoing research to explore global health and medical misinformation by examining whether social identity drives the tendency to believe misinformation in high-stakes health contexts, such as vaccine efficacy, disease outbreaks, and rare diseases. Understanding these dynamics is especially urgent given the real-world consequences of medical misinformation for public health behaviour and policy-making. The student will be responsible for investigating real and fake headlines on a medical or global health topic of interest to them, adapting the existing experimental design, analysing whether shared identity increases belief in these headlines, and developing an accessible toolkit for future misinformation research. This project offers hands-on experience in experimental design and advanced statistical analysis, whilst contributing to a socially and scientifically important evidence base. Students will need to find their own accommodation and be expected to present their findings orally at a research day in York on 08th September 2026.