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Table 3: Pearson product-moment correlations (Study 3). BSR = Bullshit Receptivity scale; a = full scale, b = outliers (N = 22) removed. Bottom diagonal = full sample (N = 114). Top diagonal = Participants with knowledge of Deepak Chopra excluded (N = 67). Cronbach’s alphas for the full sample are reported in brackets. *** p < .001, ∗∗ p < .01, ∗ p < .05.

On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-profound Bullshit Table 3

SE = .08, p < .001, item-level: t(28) = 3.44, SE = .10, p = .002. Moreover, the mundane statements (outliers retained, M = 1.44, SD = .78) were judged to be less profound than the BSR items, participant-level: t(113) = 13.24, SE = .10, p < .001, item-level: t(28) = 14.60, SE = .09, p < .001, and the motivational quotations, participant-level: t(113) = 18.13, SE = .09, p < .001, item-level: t(18) = 19.56, SE = .08, p < .001.

Focusing on the full sample (Table 3, bottom diagonal), BSR was negatively associated with heuristics and biases performance. This replicates Studies 1 and 2. However, there was no such association between profoundness ratings for motivational quotations and heuristics and biases performance (p = .192). To further explore the specific association between heuristics and biases performance and profundity ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit, we created a “bullshit sensitivity” score by subtracting the BSR from motivational quotation means (Table 3). Heuristics and biases was positively correlated with this measure (r = .23, p = .013), indicating an association between analytic thinking and the ability to spontaneously detect pseudo-profound bullshit. These results were similar when the sample was restricted to those with no knowledge of Deepak Chopra (Table 3, top diagonal). Indeed, the association between bullshit sensitivity and heuristics and biases performance was nominally larger in the restricted sample (r = .31, p = .012).

The BSR was correlated with profoundness ratings for motivational quotations and mundane statements (Table 3, bottom diagonal; although only marginally when outliers are removed in the latter case, p = .072). Profoundness ratings for motivational quotations and mundane statements were also marginally correlated (p = .067; p = .170 when outliers are removed), indicating a potential disposition toward higher profoundness ratings among some participants (i.e., response bias). There was also an association between heuristics and biases performance and profoundness ratings for mundane statements (p = .009), but it did not remain significant once the outliers were removed (p = .476). This pattern of results is identical in the restricted sample. These results indicate that, at least for some participants, response bias plays a role in bullshit receptivity and explains some of its association with analytic thinking.

14Study 4

The results of Study 3 indicate that the association between profoundness ratings and reflective thinking is largely specific to bullshit items. The lack of correlation between heuristics and biases performance and profoundness ratings for motivational quotations, in particular, indicates that more reflective participants are not merely more skeptical toward all manner of profound-sounding statements. However, there was an unequal number of bullshit (N = 20) and motivational (N = 10) items in Study 3. Moreover, it is unclear whether the inclusion of mundane statements interacted in some way with participants’ evaluation of the bullshit and motivational statements. Thus, in Study 4, we asked participants to rate the relative profoundness of 20 randomly intermixed statements (10 bullshit and 10 motivational).

In Study 3, we did not include any measures of epistemically suspect beliefs. Thus, in Study 4, participants completed the heuristics and biases battery, along with measures of paranormal belief, conspiracist ideation, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine.

15Method

15.1Participants

We recruited 242 participants (146 male, 107 female, M_age = 33.9, SD_age = 10.6) 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. We chose a larger target of 250 participants given some of the marginal results in Study 3. These data were not analyzed until the full sample was completed.