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Sigma Nutrition Radio

#576: The Social Psychology of Health Beliefs and Misinformation – Matthew Facciani, PhD

Sigma Nutrition Radio

Danny Lennon

Nutrition, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Matthew Facciani explores how social psychology influences health beliefs and the spread of misinformation. The conversation delves into why people adopt certain nutrition or health beliefs so strongly, how identity and group membership shape our interpretation of evidence, and what makes us susceptible to false or misleading health claims.

Dr. Facciani's interdisciplinary background (spanning neuroscience, psychology, and sociology) allows him to offer a unique evidence-informed perspective on these issues. The episode centers on understanding the social forces behind health-related attitudes and how we might improve communication and critical thinking in the face of rampant misinformation.

This topic is highly relevant for health professionals and researchers because misinformation about nutrition, health, and medicine can lead to poor decisions, vaccine hesitancy, or harmful fad diets. By understanding the psychological drivers that cause people to cling to unscientific beliefs, practitioners can better address patients' concerns and correct false claims.

Matthew Facciani is a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Notre Dame in the Computer Science and Engineering Department. He is an interdisciplinary social scientist with a background in neuroscience and psychology and holds a PhD in sociology. His research focuses on media literacy, misinformation, social networks, political polarization, identities, and artificial intelligence.

Timestamps

  • [01:41] Interview start
  • [06:57] The role of identities in belief formation
  • [16:01] Health attitudes and political identities
  • [25:28] Improving dialogue and addressing misinformation
  • [31:59] Does fact-checking work?
  • [35:41] Media literacy and pre-bunking
  • [44:03] Optimism and pessimism for the future
  • [52:28] Key ideas segment (premium-only)

Related Resources

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 576 of the podcast.

0:06.2

My name is Danny Lennon and you were very welcome to the show.

0:09.7

Today I'm going to be talking with Dr. Matthew Facciani, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame in the Computer Science and Engineering Department.

0:18.4

There he is a social scientist across a number of different disciplines

0:21.8

with a background in neuroscience and psychology, and he has a PhD in sociology. His research

0:28.6

tends to focus on concepts like media literacy, social networks, identities, political polarization,

0:36.2

and AI.

0:38.1

And based on this background, today we're going to explore how social psychology plays a role in our beliefs about health and nutrition, how that ties a role into why we might believe certain types of information versus other forms of information.

0:52.7

We might look at how identity and belonging to particular types of groups can shape our interpretation of evidence overall and how we might be susceptible to false or misleading health claims.

1:04.4

Those you who are Sigma Nutrition Premium subscribers can get a set of detailed study notes that accompany this episode covering all the concepts discussed throughout in addition to a transcript of the episode and our key idea segment that follows the interview.

1:19.3

If you're listening over on the public feed of the podcast and you're interested in using your podcast listening as a real educational tool and be able to use that to revise or go deeper on some

1:29.1

of the concepts you hear on the podcast, then check out the details of Sigma Nutrition Premium

1:34.7

linked up in the description box where you're currently listening and see if it's something

1:38.5

that might be of utility to you. So with that, let's get into this discussion between myself and Dr. Matthew

1:45.6

Facciani.

1:58.7

Welcome to the podcast to Dr. Matthew Facciani.

2:01.6

Thank you so much for having me.

2:02.6

I'm excited to talk about all the things.

2:05.4

Obviously, you have a number of academic publications and public-facing work with your book, which we'll maybe mention.

2:11.0

But some of these themes are really useful for a couple of reasons.

2:14.1

Many people listening will see how they've played out in many of the topics

2:17.6

we tend to discuss on this podcast, but also across all sorts of domains. And you actually have

...

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