variable as it converges with and diverges from other related uses of vagueness. We anticipate that there are many variations of vague, ambiguous, or otherwise unclear statements that have unique psychological correlates in varied contexts that are amenable to study.
18Limitations and caveats
Bullshit comes in many forms and we have focused on only one type. Frankfurt (2005) discusses the so-called bull session wherein "people try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without it being assumed that they are committed to what they say: It is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel" (p. 9). This qualifies as bullshit under Frankfurt's broad definition because the content is being communicated absent a concern for the truth. Nonetheless, the character of conversational bullshit is likely quite different from pseudo-profound bullshit, and by extension the reception and detection of it may be determined by different psychological factors. It is important for researchers interested in the psychology of bullshit to be clear about the type of bullshit that they are investigating.
Our bullshit receptivity scale was quite successful overall, but future work is needed to refine and improve it. In particular, the bullshit sensitivity measure would be improved if there was a more direct mapping between the pseudoprofound bullshit and the genuinely meaningful control items. Naturally, more items would improve both scales. Finally, knowledge of Deepak Chopra may subtly confound experiments using our bullshit sensitivity scale (or, at least, slightly restrict the effect size).
Finally, we have focused on an individual differences approach given that our primary goal was to demonstrate that bullshit receptivity is a consequential thing that can be reliably measured. This preliminary work is required for experiments to be meaningful. Future work should focus on the dual goals of further refining our measure of bullshit receptivity and experimentally modulating profundity ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit.
19Conclusion
Bullshit is a consequential aspect of the human condition. Indeed, with the rise of communication technology, people are likely encountering more bullshit in their everyday lives than ever before. Profundity ratings for statements containing a random collection of buzzwords were very strongly correlated with a selective collection of actual "Tweets" from Deepak Chopra's "Twitter" feed (r's = .88–89). At the time of this writing, Chopra has over 2.5 million followers on "Twitter" and has written more than twenty New York Times bestsellers. Bullshit is not only common; it is popular.[1] Chopra is, of course, just one example among many. Using vagueness or ambiguity to mask a lack of meaningfulness is surely common in political rhetoric, marketing, and even academia (Sokal, 2008). Indeed, as intimated by Frankfurt (2005), bullshitting is something that we likely all engage in to some degree (p. 1): "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share." One benefit of gaining a better understanding of how we reject other's bullshit is that it may teach us to be more cognizant of our own bullshit.
The construction of a reliable index of bullshit receptivity is an important first step toward gaining a better understanding of the underlying cognitive and social mechanisms that determine if and when bullshit is detected. Our bullshit receptivity scale was associated with a relatively wide range of important psychological factors. This is a valuable first step toward gaining a better understanding of the psychology of bullshit. The development of interventions and strategies that help individuals guard against bullshit is an important additional goal that requires considerable attention from cognitive and social psychologists. That people vary in their receptivity toward bullshit is perhaps less surprising than the fact that psychological scientists have heretofore neglected this issue. Accordingly, although this manuscript may not be truly profound, it is indeed meaningful.
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- ↑ And profitable. Deepak Chopra is one of the wealthiest holistic-health "gurus" (Perry, 1997). This is not to say that everything Deepak Chopra has written is bullshit. Nonetheless, some of it seems to meet our definition of pseudo-profound bullshit. Our goal here is to simply raise the possibility that Chopra's tendency to bullshit (as claimed by others, Shermer, 2010) may have played an important role in his popularity.
