Situational Factors Influencing Receptivity to Bullshit

Abstract

Individuals are motivated to maintain a sense of meaning, and enact cognitive processes to do so (e.g., perceiving structure in the environment). This motivation to find meaning may ultimately impact humans’ interpretation of "bullshit", statements intended to convey profundity without any meaning. Conversely, subtle cues threatening the meaningfulness of bullshit may elicit greater skepticism. Three studies tested situational factors predicted to heighten or diminish susceptibility to bullshit by changing motivations to seek meaning. We employed diverse methods including symbolic meaning threat (Study 1), social exclusion (Cyberball; Study 2), and manipulating cognitive fluency (Study 3). Taken together, the results indicate basic processes shaping the detection of meaning have implications for the appraisal of ambiguously insightful information.

How Obscurantism Differs from Bullshit: A Proposal

“…A pattern of suggestions can be seen in various empirical studies that have been carried out on susceptibility to bullshit (Bolton, 2015; Pennycook et al, 2015), sensitivity to bullshit (Erlandsson et al, 2018), receptivity of bullshit (Brown, Keefer and McGrew, 2019), and the correlation between pseudo‐profound and scientific bullshit (Evans et al, 2020). The studies suggest that vulnerability to bullshit increases with low levels of intelligence.…”

“…Pennycook et al found that people who were more receptive to bullshit were those who were low in the capacity for reflective thinking and cognitive ability, likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and likely to endorse alternative medicine (Pennycook et al, 2015; Čavojová et al, 2020). Other studies also suggest that bullshit predicts diminished prosocial behaviour (Erlandsson et al, 2018), rises with a heightened presumption of meaningfulness (Brown et al, 2019), and serves as a low‐cost strategy for impressing other people (Turpin et al, 2019). Conversely, successful producers of bullshit are rated more intelligent than others (Turpin et al, 2020).…”