Philosophical and psychological approaches to bullshit

Abstract

In this paper, we give an overview of philosophical considerations of and psychological empirical research on bullshit. While taking this concept from philosophy, in the first wave of research, psychologists implicitly changed both the content and definition of the concept, focusing on aspects of bullshit phenomena addressable by empirical tools, such as individual differences in bullshit receptivity. In the second wave, researchers, adequately, relied more on contemporary philosophical analyses and definitions of bullshit. This led to employing experimental procedures to examine the distinctive features of such statements, influence of the speaker, that is - the source of bullshit, as well as implications for public discourse. In the concluding part, shortcomings of the existing approaches addressed, social implications of use of bullshit and receptivity to them are highlighted, and suggestions on how to overcome these shortcomings are presented.

The effect of source credibility on bullshit receptivity

“…For instance, commercials associated with a source of high credibility are rated as more truthful and believable, compared to commercials associated with low credibility source (Moore, Hausknecht, & Thamodaran, 1986). So, extending on the findings about labeling, that is, context effects, and extant research about effects of source credibility, we tested potential effects of sources' credibility and its' varying levels on profoundness evaluations of bullshit, as this has not yet been empirically examined (Ilić & Damnjanović, 2021a, 2021b).…”