On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit

[algernon]

I saw this some time back and thought a lot of people here might appreciate this study - http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf

 

I have read a lot of those pseudo-profound statements and it always confused me, because most people pretend to understand it and act like its, profound. In actuality it means nothing.

 

Here is the abstract to whet your appetite -

 

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.

 

 

[Cuffy_Meigs]

Thanks for posting the link. It does seem that the authors had some fun, making full use of the opportunity to use the word 'bullshit' as often as possible in the article!

 

I think people usually fall into one of three categories in their responses to bullshit. The really smart ones tend to have an immediate response of 'gosh, maybe there's something here I didn't realise..' and only dismiss it on reflection, however brief. Second there's the people who, on hearing anything that fails to accord with expectation just dismiss the person as an idiot (this applies even when it isn't bullshit). Finally there are those who assume all intellectuals are clever so it must be right in some way.