On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit

Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Judgment and Decision Making Vol. 10; no. 6; pp. 549 - 563
Main Authors: Pennycook, Gordon, Allan Cheyne, James, Barr, Nathaniel, Koehler, Derek J., Fugelsang, Jonathan A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Tallahassee Society for Judgment and Decision Making 01.11.2015
Cambridge University Press
Subjects:
Analysis
analytic thinking
Bias
bullshit
bullshit detection
Cognition & reasoning
complementary and alternative medicine.NAKeywords
conspiratorial ideation
Decision making
Dishonesty
dual-process theories
Judgment
Personality tests
Philosophers
Reception theory
religiosity
Studies
supernatural beliefs
United States
religiosity
conspiratorial ideation
dual-process theories
analytic thinking
bullshit
bullshit detection
complementary and alternative medicine
supernatural beliefs
ISSN:1930-2975, 1930-2975
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous. We presented participants with bullshit statements consisting of buzzwords randomly organized into statements with syntactic structure but no discernible meaning (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”). Across multiple studies, the propensity to judge bullshit statements as profound was associated with a variety of conceptually relevant variables (e.g., intuitive cognitive style, supernatural belief). Parallel associations were less evident among profundity judgments for more conventionally profound (e.g., “A wet person does not fear the rain”) or mundane (e.g., “Newborn babies require constant attention”) statements. These results support the idea that some people are more receptive to this type of bullshit and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims. Our results also suggest that a bias toward accepting statements as true may be an important component of pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
ISSN:1930-2975
1930-2975
DOI:10.1017/s1930297500006999