Bullshit blind spots: the roles of miscalibration and information processing in bullshit detection

Abstract

The growing prevalence of misleading information (i.e., bullshit) in society carries with it an increased need to understand the processes underlying many people's susceptibility to falling for it. Here we report two studies (N = 412) examining the associations between one's ability to detect pseudo-profound bullshit, confidence in one's bullshit detection abilities, and the metacognitive experience of evaluating potentially misleading information. We find that people with the lowest (highest) bullshit detection performance overestimate (underestimate) their detection abilities and overplace (underplace) those abilities when compared to others. Additionally, people reported using both intuitive and reflective thinking processes when evaluating misleading information. Taken together, these results show that both highly bullshit-receptive and highly bullshit-resistant people are largely unaware of the extent to which they can detect bullshit and that traditional miserly processing explanations of receptivity to misleading information may be insufficient to fully account for these effects.

Not all bullshit pondered is tossed: Reflection decreases receptivity to some types of misleading information but not others

“…The results presented here reveal important differences in the extent to which reflective thinking can alter perceptions of various types of misleading information. Crucially, we found that engaging in explanatory reflection leads to a reduction in receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit, which supports Rand's (2019, 2020) claims that bullshit receptivity is driven (at least partially) by a lack of engagement in reflective thinking (also see Littrell & Fugelsang, 2023). However, we found that engaging in an explanatory reflection task did not reduce receptivity to scientific bullshit or fake news, which conflicts with the argument made by Rand (2019, 2020).…”

“…However, a growing body of work has called these assumptions into question (Blacksmith et al, 2019;Patel et al, 2019;Stupple et al, 2017), finding that correct responses on tasks traditionally believed to require analytic reflection often result instead from "smart intuition" (Bago & De Neys, 2019;Raoelison et al, 2020). Moreover, using both self-report and reaction time data, Littrell and Fugelsang (2023) found that many people who gave higher ratings to pseudo-profound bullshit reported engaging in slower, more error-prone rationalizing while others who were less receptive to bullshit statements reported relying on faster, intuition-like processes.…”

“…Bullshit receptivity refers to a proclivity for giving inflated positive evaluations to various types of misleading information (Littrell & Fugelsang, 2023; Pennycook et al, 2015). Put another way, it reflects the extent to which a person “falls for” various types of bullshit.…”

“…Receptivity to misleading information is positively associated with various types of overconfidence. For example, those who are most receptive to pseudo‐profound bullshit and fake news overestimate their ability to detect it and exhibit a “bullshit blind spot” by believing their detection abilities are better than those of the average person (Littrell & Fugelsang, 2023; Lyons et al, 2021). Additionally, receptivity to pseudo‐profound bullshit is positively related to a person's confidence that they have knowledge of non‐existent concepts, known as overclaiming (Pennycook & Rand, 2020).…”

Item-response theoretical examinations of a lot of bullshit: Evaluations of measures of bullshit production and reception

“…Research on deceptive behaviors usually focuses on lying, which deals with the deliberate production of false information to obtain desired goals. Another research area dealing with deceptive communication that has burgeoned only recently refers to bullshit (BS) BS deals with information expressed with indifference for truth, meaning, or accuracy which is supposed to impress, persuade, or mislead others for individual advantages (Littrell & Fugelsang, 2023;Littrell et al, 2022). BS production (bullshitting [BS'ing]), in turn, is the intentional, goal-directed dissemination of this kind of misleading information.…”