Sacha Altay is an experimental psychologist working on misinformation, trust, and social media in the Digital Democracy Lab at the University of Zurich.

Through his research, he tries to understand why, despite people’s socio-cognitive abilities to resist misinformation, some false beliefs are widespread. Before coming to Zurich, he completed his Ph.D. in cognitive science at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.

Sacha has tested novel communication techniques to correct people’s misperceptions and fight misinformation. He draws inspiration from theories in social psychology, media studies, and evolutionary psychology. So far, most of his work falls at the intersection of communication and reputation management.

Sacha is a dedicated science communicator. He frequently gives talks to the general public and enjoys writing science popularization articles for journals or scientific blogs. For ethical and epistemic reasons, Sacha is a strong advocate of open science practices.

His research has been published in academic journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, New Media & Society, Digital Journalism, Evolution & Human Behavior and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Sacha holds a bachelor in sociology from Paris Diderot University and a master in Cognitive Science from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. 

For more information on Sacha, see his Google Scholar profile.