tion of vague buzzwords organized in a sentence with syntactic structure. This tendency was significantly related to cognitive variables of conceptual interest in expected ways. In Study 2 we set out to replicate this pattern of results using real-world examples of bullshit. For this, we created an additional scale using particularly vague “tweets” from Deepak Chopra’s “Twitter” account (see Table S2). We also expanded our measures of analytic cognitive style by including self-report measures of analytic and intuitive thinking disposition. Finally, we expanded our cognitive ability measures by increasing the number of items on the numeracy test and including a common measure of fluid intelligence.
9Method
9.1Participants
A total of 198 participants (98 male, 100 female, Mage =
36, SDage = 11.4) were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in return for pay. Only American residents were
permitted to sign up for the study. All participants reported
speaking fluent English. Given the novelty of the phenomenon, we chose 200 participants as an arbitrary target
sample size, as we determined this would provide adequate
power and stability of the correlations. These data were not
analyzed until the full sample was completed.
Eleven participants were removed because they responded affirmatively when asked if they responded randomly at any time during the study. In addition, 23 participants failed at least one of three attention check questions.
The instruction check questions included the one used in
Study 1 as well as the following question inserted into questionnaires at the middle and end of the survey: “I have been
to every country in the world” (all participants who selected
any option but “strongly disagree” were removed). However, as in Study 1, the results were similar when these participants were excluded and we therefore retained the full
sample.
9.2Materials
In addition to the 10 meaningless statements used in Study
1, we obtained 10 novel items from http://wisdomofchopra.
com and http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/. As noted, we also
obtained 10 items from Deepak Chopra’s Twitter feed
(http://twitter.com/deepakchopra; e.g. “Nature is a selfregulating ecosystem of awareness”). These items can be
found in Table S2. We excluded hash tags and expanded
any shortened words and abbreviations, but the tweets were
not otherwise altered. We emphasize that we deliberately
selected tweets that seemed vague and, therefore, the selected statements should not be taken as representative of
Chopra’s tweet history or body of work. Also, to reiterate, we focus on Chopra here merely because others have
claimed that some of the things that he has written seem like
“woo-woo nonsense” (e.g., Shermer, 2010) and because of
the connection between these claims and the bullshit generator websites that we used. None of this is intended to
imply that every statement in Chopra’s tweet history is bullshit. Participants were given the same instructions as Study
1 and, therefore, we did not indicate the author of the statements.
Participants completed one cognitive task and one selfreport questionnaire intended to assess individual differences in analytic cognitive style. Participants were given the
heuristics and biases battery (as in Study 1; α = .75) along
with Pacini and Epstein’s (1999) Rational-Experiential Inventory. The latter includes the 20-item Need for Cognition
(NFC) scale and the 20-item Faith in Intuition scale (FI).
Both scales had excellent reliability: α = .93 (NFC) and .94
(FI). Participants were given questions such as “reasoning
things out carefully is not one of my strong points” (NFC,
reverse scored) and “I like to rely on my intuitive impressions” (FI). They were asked to respond based on a 5 point
scale from 1-Definitely not true of myself to 5-Definitely
true of myself.
To assess cognitive ability, we retained the Wordsum (α
= .63), and the numeracy test from Study 1. However, given
the low reliability for the 3-item numeracy test in Study 1,
we used an additional 6 items (Lipkus et al., 2001), which
lead to better reliability for the full 9-item scale (α = .63).
We also added a short form of Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) that consists of 12 problems. The
APM are a widely used measure of fluid intelligence and the
short form has been validated in multiple studies (Arthur &
Day, 1994; Chiesi, Ciancaleoni, Galli, Morsanyi & Primi,
2012). It had acceptable internal consistency in our sample
(α = .69).
We used the same ontological confusion (α = .75) and religious belief measure (α = .96) as in Study 1. Finally, we
administered the Paranormal Belief Scale (Tobacyk, 2004;
Pennycook et al., 2012) with the religious belief items excluded. The scale consisted of 22 items sampled from 6 categories of supernatural belief (example items in parentheses): Psi (“Mind reading is possible”), Witchcraft (“Witches
do exist”), Omens of luck (“Black cats can bring bad luck”),
Spiritualism (“It is possible to communicate with the dead”),
Extraordinary life forms (“The Loch Ness monster of Scotland exists”) and Precognition (“Astrology is a way to accurately predict the future”). The full scale had excellent
internal consistency (α = .96).
Participants also completed wealth distribution and political ideology measures. These measures were included as
part of separate investigations and will not be analyzed or
discussed further.
