Bullshit Makes the Art Grow Profounder

Abstract

Across four studies participants (N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8), and no titles. Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-generated abstract art, compared to when no titles were present (Study 1). Mundane titles did not enhance the perception of profoundness, indicating that pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically (as opposed to titles in general) enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract art (Study 2). Furthermore, these effects generalize to artist-created abstract art (Study 3). Finally, we report a large correlation between profoundness ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and "International Art English" statements (Study 4), a mode and style of communication commonly employed by artists to discuss their work. This correlation suggests that these two independently developed communicative modes share underlying cognitive mechanisms in their interpretations. We discuss the potential for these results to be integrated into a larger, new theoretical framework of bullshit as a low-cost strategy for gaining advantages in prestige awarding domains.

Aesthetic Judgments of Live and Recorded Music: Effects of Congruence Between Musical Artist and Piece

“…For example, one study found that listeners reported greater enjoyment of music when they were told it was written by Mozart than when they were told it was written by a less prominent composer ( Fischinger et al, 2018 ). Similarly, with other artforms, individuals judge artworks to be less valuable if they are duplicates of the original ( Newman and Bloom, 2012 ), and find artworks to be more profound if they are coupled with a profound-sounding title ( Turpin et al, 2019 ). Together, this work suggests that contextual information outside the music itself can have a strong influence on a listener’s aesthetic experience.…”

Playing the Bullshit Game: How Empty and Misleading Communication Takes Over Organizations

“…The link between bullshitting, favourable judgement and resourcing can be seen in a recent study of the evaluation of contemporary art. This study found that when abstract images were paired with randomly generated ‘bullshit’ titles, they were judged as being more profound than images which either had no title or a descriptive title (Turpin et al, 2019). In this context, bullshit was a low-cost strategy that encouraged evaluators to see an image as more valuable than they otherwise would.…”

Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

“…More specifically, we propose that the ability to produce satisfying bullshit may have emerged as an energetically efficient strategy for achieving an agent's goals (such as acquiring status or impressing mates). That is, an agent can engage in the arduous process of acquiring expert skills in domains that they could then leverage to accomplish certain goals, or can utilize bullshit as a strategy that potentially produces the same benefits at a much smaller cost (Turpin et al, 2019). Of course, these strategies need not be mutually exclusive, as the ability to produce satisfying bullshit may help even highly skilled individuals achieve their goals over equally skilled peers.…”

“…Bullshitting, with its emphasis on impressing others without regard for truth or meaning (Frankfurt, 2009;Pennycook et al, 2015), may represent an energetically inexpensive strategy for social navigation. Indeed, past work provides initial evidence for this claim, demonstrating that indiscriminately attaching meaningless pseudo-profound bullshit titles to artworks increases their perceived profundity (Turpin et al, 2019). On this basis, it has been hypothesized that bullshit can be used to gain a competitive advantage in any domain of human competition where the criteria for determining who succeeds and fails at least partially relies on impressing others.…”

“…Other work has begun to examine peoples' willingness to bullshit (Littrell, 2019), including investigation of the conditions under which people are most likely to produce bullshit (Petrocelli, 2018). Yet, minimal work has assessed how bullshit can be used to navigate social systems (Turpin et al, 2019;McCarthy et al, 2020). For example, a person who is capable of producing good bullshit may be perceived as especially charming, convincing, or competent as long as their deception is left undiscovered.…”