The Keats heuristic suggests that people find aesthetically pleasing expressions more accurate than mundane expressions. We test this notion with antimetabolic statements. Antimetabole is a stylistic phenomenon in which at least two words are repeated in reverse order, following an A-B-B-A pattern (e.g., “all for one and one for all”). Across four studies (N = 797), we show that antimetabolic statements (e.g., “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”) are judged as more accurate than semantically equivalent non-antimetabolic statements (e.g., “Success is getting what you wish. Happiness is wanting what you receive.”). Furthermore, we evaluate fluency as a potential mechanism explaining the observed accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements. To this end, we find that antimetabolic statements are perceived as more aesthetically pleasing and elicit quicker accuracy judgments compared to non-antimetabolic statements. Nevertheless, accuracy judgment response times and aesthetic preferences failed to correlate with judgments of accuracy, casting doubt on fluency as the mechanism driving the accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements. Overall, the current work demonstrates how stylistic factors bias assessments of truth, with information communicated using aesthetically pleasing stylistic devices (e.g., antimetabole) being perceived as more truthful.

The Keats heuristic suggests that people find esthetically pleasing expressions more accurate than mundane expressions. We test this notion with chiastic statements. Chiasmus is a stylistic phenomenon in which at least two linguistic constituents are repeated in reverse order, conventionally represented by the formula A-B-B-A. Our study focuses on the specific form of chiasmus known as antimetabole, in which the reverse-repeated constituents are words (e.g., All for one and one for all; A = all, B = one). In three out of four experiments (N = 797), we find evidence that people judge antimetabolic statements (e.g., Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.) as more accurate than semantically equivalent nonantimetabolic statements (e.g., Success is getting what you wish. Happiness is wanting what you receive.). Furthermore, we evaluate fluency as a potential mechanism explaining the observed accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements, finding that the increased speed (i.e., fluency) with which antimetabolic statements were processed predicted judgments of accuracy. Overall, the present work is consistent with the growing literature on stylistic factors biasing assessments of truth, using the distinctive stylistic pattern of antimetabole. We find that information communicated using an antimetabolic structure is judged to be more accurate than nonantimetabolic paraphrases. Public Significance StatementThe rhetorical figure called antimetabole repeats words in the reverse order (e.g., nice and important in It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice). We found that antimetabolic statements evoke stronger feelings of truthfulness compared to the same meanings expressed without reverse repetition (e.g., It's nice to be important, but it's more critical to be kind). We argue that the increased speed with which antimetabolic statements are judged partially explains the accuracy benefit that they confer. Our findings suggest that stylistic factors-in this case, antimetabole-bias evaluations of truth.

How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender-career and racial bias. Following provision of historical trend data on the domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N=86 teams/359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts based on new data six months later (Tournament 2; N=120 teams/546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists’ forecasts were on average no more accurate than simple statistical models (historical means, random walk, or linear regressions) or the aggregate forecasts of a sample from the general public (N=802). However, scientists were more accurate if they had scientific expertise in a prediction domain, were interdisciplinary, used simpler models, and based predictions on prior data.

Wisdom has been a central theme in the philosophical inquiry of the human experience for centuries, with the earliest written teachings dating back to the ancient Egyptian vizier, Ptahhotep 25-24 century BCE. The virtue of wisdom has been attributed to the great deities of various cultures and mythologies (e.g., Anahit of Armenia, Athena of Greece), and a quality humankind is encouraged to embody millennia later. In more recent decades, psychological scientists have begun to study the concept of wisdom, exploring characteristics of a wise person as well as meta-cognitive processes and moral aspirations involved in wise decision making. At the core of wisdom is the recognition and acceptance that for any given issue there are different possible perspectives, interests, contexts, and outcomes, as well as the willingness to consider and take into account these different possibilities when working through the issue. This chapter reviews the psychological study of wisdom, with a focus on the conceptual and empirical construct of wisdom as it relates to the possible.

How do people reason in response to ambiguous messages shared by admirable individuals? Using behavioral markers and self-report questionnaires, in two experiments (N = 571) we examined the influence of speakers’ admirability on meaning-seeking and wise reasoning in response to pseudo-profound bullshit. In both studies, statements that sounded superficially impressive but lacked intent to communicate meaning generated meaning-seeking, but only when delivered by high admirability speakers (e.g., the Dalai Lama) as compared to low admirability speakers (e.g., Kim Kardashian). The effect of speakers’ admirability on meaning-seeking was unique to pseudo-profound bullshit statements and was absent for mundane (Study 1) and motivational (Study 2) statements. In Study 2, participants also engaged in wiser reasoning for pseudo-profound bullshit (vs. motivational) statements and did more so when speakers were high in admirability. These effects occurred independently of the amount of time spent on statements or the complexity of participants’ reflections. It appears that pseudo-profound bullshit can promote epistemic reflection and certain aspects of wisdom, when associated with an admirable speaker.