People with a healthy mental immune system are more likely to detect misinformation. A strong cognitive immune system can also help spot bad ideas at an earlier stage, so you may avoid wasting time, energy or money.

a healthy mental immune system will detect harmful or incorrect information that enters our mind, so that it can be recognised as such and then promptly rejected.

While factual information is a great asset, unreliable information and the inability to spot bad ideas may lead to poor decision making.

the publics’ cognitive immunity to misinformation was reinforced when they were given a pre-emptive warning about politically motivated attempts to spread misinformation on the human causes of global warming.

developing greater cognitive flexibility allows us to change our minds faster when new, better-evidenced information is presented to us.

Remember that misinformation is common, that fake news is designed to appear genuine, and train yourself to immediately interrogate the information or data you are presented with.

A meta-belief is a belief that one holds following a thorough reasoning process or cognitive interrogation to check the validity of the belief.

Developing meta-beliefs strongly correlates with mental immunity. To strengthen your mental immune system, be prepared to assess and re-adjust previously held beliefs if new evidence comes to light.

For greater mental nourishment, diversify your information sources and dig deeper into the underlying research to fully understand whether you are unconsciously being sold misinformation.