“Who said it?” How contextual information influences perceived profundity of meaningful quotes and pseudo‐profound bullshit

Abstract

Summary Psychological research on pseudo‐profound bullshit—randomly assembled buzz words plugged into a syntactic structure—has only recently begun. Most such research has focused on dispositional traits, such as thinking styles or political orientation. However, none has investigated contextual factors. In two studies, we introduce a new paradigm by investigating the contextual effect on pseudo‐profound bullshit and meaningful quotes. In Study 1, all participants rated the profundity of statements in three contexts: (a) isolated, (b) as allegedly said by a famous author, or (c) within a vignette (short story). Study 2 serves as a conceptual replication in which participants rated statements in only one of three contexts. Overall, our results demonstrate that although contextual information such as author's name increases the perceived profundity of bullshit, it has an inconsistent effect on meaningful quotes. The present study helps to better understand the bullshit receptivity while offering a new line of research.

The Einstein effect: Global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity

“…While this approach makes it more difficult to single out which specific factor contributes to the source effect, it increases the ecological validity of our manipulation: real life instances of source credibility also involve a combination of different features (e.g., authorities typically look the part in public and appear in congruous contexts). Furthermore, a recent study showed that the mere mentioning of a famous source such as Aristotle or the Dalai Lama enhanced profundity ratings for pseudo-profound nonsense relative to unauthored versions, suggesting that even the mere name of an authority may suffice to induce source effects 87 .…”

The effect of source credibility on bullshit receptivity

“…Recently, very similar context effects were registered with bullshit. When attributed to an author who is famous , or implemented in a vignette or an authored excerpt from a book, bullshit is deemed more profound than when presented isolated (Gligorić & Vilotijević, 2019). The authors call this effect of varying bullshit context “the labeling effect” (Gligorić & Vilotijević, 2019).…”

“…When attributed to an author who is famous , or implemented in a vignette or an authored excerpt from a book, bullshit is deemed more profound than when presented isolated (Gligorić & Vilotijević, 2019). The authors call this effect of varying bullshit context “the labeling effect” (Gligorić & Vilotijević, 2019). Although this finding gives very valuable insight into the fact that the context in which people encounter bullshit influences their judgment about bullshit, it does not provide information about what is it about the ascribed authors that drives the changes in profoundness evaluations.…”

Philosophical and psychological approaches to bullshit

“…U skladu sa time i malobrojna istraživanja kontekstualnih faktora koji utiču na receptivnost na verbalizme upravo su se ticala izvora iskaza tj. uticaja pripisanog autorstva na receptivnost na PDV (na primer Gligorić & Vilotijević 2019;Ilić 2019;. Ipak, sama ideja o uticaju izvora na procene dubokoumnosti nije revolucionarni izum autora ovih istraživanja već potiče još iz Penikukovog početnog istraživanja ovog fenomena (Pennycook et al 2015), a tiče se epistemički inferiorne pozicije ispitanika u psihološkom istraživanju.…”