On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit

[Yeti101]

On bullshit detection -

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.

Full article here: http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf

[FancyPants]

Buddha on a biscuit, I wonder if they got the idea from reading my SAB posts...

[wert]

woops and I'll say it again... woops.

[Cubism]

Just read about this last night. Thx for posting the article yeti.

[Yeti101]

On the journal site, you can, if you are so (obsessively) inclined, download the .csv data files. Open access journals rule.

[ThunderIdeal]

Receptivity to self-enveloping emergent doctrines is dictated, paradoxically, by the permeable reflectivity of one's sub-perceptivity reflectivity proclivity. Diggity!

[SayN]

Receptivity to self-enveloping emergent doctrines is dictated, paradoxically, by the permeable reflectivity of one's sub-perceptivity reflectivity proclivity. Diggity!

Confucious?

[Maxofoz]

Deepak Chopra is the biggest pseudo bullshit artist next to David Wolfe. These blokes make a fortune on it.

This is just plain loony!

 

[SayN]

^ middle name 'avocado' was a dead giveaway tho

[Sallubrious]

I've been training my kids since they could talk to have a highly tuned bullshit detector. I started out with simple lies and twists of the truth like dogs have 3 legs and moved on to increasingly more elaborate constucts of fantasy.

It's hard to pull the wool over their eyes now, if they don't believe something they'll call bullshit or quiz me to see if I'm full of crap. The other day I told my daughter I had a unicorn when I was her age and she looked at me like I'd flipped my biscuit, then she said unicorns aren't real. So I told her they were real but now they're extinct, I had the last one, so she went and googled it.

I like to keep them on their toes and evaluate whatever they hear or read before they accept it as fact.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Sally

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

Hahaha unicorns that's awesome

[shortly]

Of course unicorns are real, it just depend upon your definition of unicorn Google it.

Edited December 4, 2015 by shortly

[2XB]

And your definition of real.. .

So I am not a fan of PSuedo profound statements or anything, but is this study taken from the onion or what??

Using psuedo scientific studies to illustrate how people who buy pseudo profound bullshit are of less intelligence.... sounds like a whole lotta bullshit to me

[Cubism]

DB - can you explain why you think its a pseudo scientific study? (honest question, still haven't got around to reading past the second page of the article yet)

[etherealdrifter]

Using psuedo scientific studies to illustrate how people who buy pseudo profound bullshit are of less intelligence.... sounds like a whole lotta bullshit to me

i agree with doublebenno

it's tantamount to heresy to postulate that just because somebody has a laugh - and dare may i say even enjoy - some pseudo bs from time time.

Let's face it this existence can be a downer sometimes and therefore, there is no need to further drive yourself(or others)insane with inane banter about what is real and what is not.

Sally pretty much encapsulates my feelings by providing solid evidence that it can all be used to educate young minds to the pitfalls that abound around us , yet poignantly demonstrates the advantage of harnessing free thought for a better outcome.,

[2XB]

DB - can you explain why you think its a pseudo scientific study? (honest question, still haven't got around to reading past the second page of the article yet)

Less than 300 People in the study, from one university who got course credit for participating :-)

Online unI as well by the look of it

Edited December 4, 2015 by doublebenno

[Cubism]

Less than 300 People in the study, from one university who got course credit for participating :-)

Online unI as well by the look of it

Haha was just typing out a long response when you posted this.

Wouldn't have a clue about the university but thats not entirely relevant, the research methods and integrity are what matters. It is standard practice to use students and course credits. Apart from being prohibitively expensive to source outside participants every single study )Unis have dozens if not hundreds of these studies at any one time), it is also one of the standards in Psych faculties that all 1st year students participate in research in order to learn about the process and be introduced to the world most psych non-clinicians will be working in, so thats not dodgy at all. Same goes for paying participants. Sample size could have been bigger sure, but all studies have limitations, funding and time is limited, and really 2 or 3 hundred participants is not such a bad sample. 20 participants would be an unreliable sample size. And either way, neither reason you state gives cause to label it pseudo science. If they were an issue, which they aren't, it would simply be a flawed study and widely rejected (which it still may end up being)

(This is what I was about to post before I saw your reply DB)

Just read the whole article so heres my 2 cents.

1- It is perfectly valid psychological research with no glaringly obvious flaws. It is however a correlational study, so no where are they saying "this" causes "that", they are simply investigating relationships between differences in cognition and being receptive to statements from the likes of Chopra.

2- Cognition is not intelligence, although they are intrinsically related, but it is not judging people or calling them stupid for their beliefs, it's just a way of further understanding thought processes in regards to how we recieve and evaluate the information we take in from our environment.

3- It clearly distinguishes the differences between generally bullshitting with your mates and "pseudo profound bullshit".

4- To put it simply, its just a study of how different levels of analytical/critical thinking skills impact how receptive we are to certain information - in this case Chopra style "new age" statements.

5 - An extreme real life example of how this might be relevant to people - a parent of a child suffering from, say, cancer, refuses to take doctors advice on treatment and instead follows the advice of fasting, herbal teas, coffee enemas etc etc from their "spiritual guru" and the child, who could have been treated and possibly cured, instead dies an agonising death.

6- A less extreme example would be to go to somewhere like a Chemist Warehouse any day of the week and look at the huge numbers of people wasting money on vitamins (which usually contain far higher doses than your body is capable of meabolising, if indeed effectve at all)

I think the problem with these things is that people tend to take it as a threat to their beliefs, attitudes, understanding or whatever without truly understanding the point of the research, especially when fairly insignificant research such as this makes it into the news, simply because journalists, I assume, know that half the people will latch on to this as some sort of proof to their beliefs, and the other half who disagree will use it to reject science, psychology [**insert almnost any other analytical discipline***] etc etc etc.

Finally just to emphasize, correlational research investigates relationships, not causes. Nowhere does it say "you must be dumb to believe bullshit" and neither does it comment on the value (or lack thereof) of pseudo profound bullshit. It's just investigating how the mind works and how different forms of cognition lead to differing beliefs. And to finish, research in psychology isn't about labelling things as bullshit or anything else, its simply about attempting to further understand how the mind works, which is very much a grey area.

**Sorry for the long winded reply but I'm a Neuroscience and Psych Science student so I love this stuff.

[2XB]

Thanks cubism I reneg my PSuedo science label.

I am not a scientist,I just saw it a poor study.

Edited December 4, 2015 by doublebenno

[Cubism]

All good dude. I ain't even close to being a scientist either. I just like brain stuff

[wert]

sounds like your already healing your children sally. well done. very inspirational. good read and personally I had a good chuckle.

keep up the good work your obviously a fantastic parent!!!

wert

[DiscoStu]

 

it's reality and you're just too brainwashed to see it