On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit
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Abstract 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.
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Research has shown that populist attitudes, analytical thinking, numerical thinking, bullshit receptivity, conspiracy mentality, news checking frequency, and social media use are associated with susceptibility to misinformation.
“we also included the following measures as covariates, which research has shown are associated with susceptibility to misinformation:”
From Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media (2022) · cites this paper as [36]
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From The fingerprints of misinformation: how deceptive content differs from reliable sources in terms of cognitive effort and appeal to emotions (2022) · cites this paper as Gordon Pennycook et al., 2015
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- Authors
- Pennycook, G., Allan Cheyne, J., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Waterloo (CA)
- Sheridan College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pennycook, Gordon
- Venue
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2015-11
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 549-563
- ISSN
- 1930-2975 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2282631200
- Cited by
- 536
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 58 · 2025: 45 · 2024: 63 · 2023: 63 · 2022: 64 · 2021: 63 · 2020: 64 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 37 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 18.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Judgment and Decision Making (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- SOURCE Sheridan's Institutional Repository (Sheridan College) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Keywords
- pseudo-profound bullshit, bullshit receptivity, intuitive cognitive style, supernatural beliefs, skepticism, buzzwords
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