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Openness/Intellect and Susceptibility to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit: a Replication and Extension

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Openness/Intellect and Susceptibility to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit: a Replication and Extension European Journal of Personality, Eur. J. Pers. 33:72–88 (2019) Published online 9 October 2018 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.2176 Openness/Intellect and Susceptibility to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit: A Replication and Extension TIMOTHY F. BAINBRIDGE1* , JOSHUA A. QUINLAN2 , RAYMOND A. MAR2 and LUKE D. SMILLIE1 1School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia 2Department of Psychology, York University, Canada Abstract: ‘Pseudo-profound bullshit’ (PPBS) is a class of meaningless statements designed to appear profound. Profundity ratings for PPBS have been found to be negatively related to analytical thinking and positively related to epistemically suspect beliefs (e.g. belief in the paranormal). Conceptually similar traits within the Openness/Intellect (O/I) domain form a simplex, whereby traits are arranged along a single dimension from intelli- gence to apophenia (i.e. observing patterns or causal connections were none exist). Across two studies (total N = 297), we attempted to replicate the O/I simplex and determine how it relates to perceiving PPBS as profound. Participants completed questionnaires measuring traits from the O/I simplex and provided profundity ratings for PPBS. Profundity ratings of PPBS tended to correlate negatively with intelligence and positively with apophenia. The association with intelligence generally reflected a greater ability to discriminate the profound from the pseudo-profound, whereas the association with apophenia reflected poorer discrimination in Study 1, with less con- clusive results in Study 2. In both studies, the O/I simplex was closely replicated. The results suggest a link between the O/I domain and perceiving PPBS as profound and tentatively support the theory that intelligence may protect against apophenia. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology Key words: Openness/Intellect; pseudo-profound bullshit; simplex; apophenia Words are the instruments that politicians, priests, and poets Pseudo-profound bullshit use to inspire and influence us. These words are presented The first scholarly examination of ‘bullshit’ was undertaken as meaningful but to the cynical observer, can sometimes ap- by Frankfurt (1986), who defined his subject as verbal state- pear partly or entirely vacuous. Consider a tweet from Deepak ments designed to impress without any direct concern for Chopra, a popular figure in alternative medicine, informing us truth (Frankfurt, 1986, 2005). The first empirical study of in- that ‘Mind and matter are subtle and dense vibrations of con- dividual differences in bullshit receptivity was undertaken by sciousness’ (Chopra, 2008; as cited in Pennycook, Cheyne, Pennycook and colleagues (2015). These authors defined Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2015). This statement has the ‘pseudo-profound bullshit’ (PPBS) as any statement de- illusion of meaning but might be described as ‘utter bullshit’ signed to inspire feelings of profundity without any direct by the aforementioned cynic. Interestingly, there are substan- concern for meaning or truth, with profundity defined as tial individual differences in the tendency to see meaning and something ‘of deep meaning; of great and broadly inclusive profundity in these kinds of statements (Pennycook et al., significance’ (Pennycook et al., 2015). Pennycook and 2015). The aims of the current research were twofold: (i) to colleagues (2015, p. 549) identified sound syntactic structure explore these individual differences in terms of their as an important characteristic of PPBS, illustrating this point relevance to a useful framework within personality—the with two examples: ‘Hidden meaning transforms unparal- Openness/Intellect (O/I) simplex (DeYoung, Grazioplene, & leled abstract beauty’ and ‘Unparalleled transforms meaning Peterson, 2012)—and (ii) to determine whether these differ- hidden abstract’. The first has a correct syntactic structure ences reflect the ability to discriminate between meaningful that gives it a façade of meaning, along with the presence and meaningless content or a propensity to see profundity in of abstract, profound-sounding words (e.g. ‘transforms’ and semantic content more generally. ‘unparalleled’). In contrast, the second example contains the same profound-sounding words but lacks a correct syn- *Correspondence to: Timothy F. Bainbridge, Melbourne School of Psycho- tactic structure, so is easily recognised as nonsense.1 logical Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] 1Like Dalton (2016), some readers may wonder if PPBS is indeed meaning- This article earned Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered less. In response, Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, and Fugelsang (2016) + Analysis Plan badges through Open Practices Disclosure from the Center noted that much of their PPBS (including the aforementioned example) was for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki. The data and materials are randomly generated by a computer algorithm with no concern with meaning, permanently and openly accessible at https://osf.io/cwbgv/, https:// truth, or profundity but rather with a concern only to have correct syntax and AsPredicted.org/gepya.pdf and https://aspredicted.org/up4rw.pdf. Author’s profound-sounding words. Although it is possible that any one of the state- disclosure form may also be found at the Supporting Information in the ments was meaningful due to chance, it is highly unlikely that these state- online version. ments, on the whole, captured anything beyond PPBS. Handling editor: Małgorzata Fajkowska Received 12 January 2018 © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology Revised 28 August 2018, Accepted 31 August 2018 Openness and Pseudo-Profound Bullshit 73 Across four studies, Pennycook and colleagues (2015) profound statements is the unbalanced nature of the Likert asked participants to rate the profundity of PPBS statements. response scale used. This scale had many more options to in- Ratings were made on a 5-point Likert scale and were aggre- dicate profound versus not profound evaluations [i.e. 1 (not gated to form a ‘Bullshit Receptivity scale’. Associations be- at all profound) compared with 2 (somewhat profound), 3 tween these ratings and two broad classes of individual (fairly profound), 4 (definitely profound), and 5 (very pro- differences measures were then examined. The first class found)]. This imbalance may have adversely affected the concerned one’s capacity and inclination to engage in analyt- reliability of the bullshit sensitivity score. Specifically, par- ical thinking (e.g. measures of intellectual engagement and ticipants who found PPBS statements to be on average at cognitive ability), whereas the second concerned epistemi- least somewhat profound (i.e. a rating of 2) would have sen- cally suspect beliefs (i.e. beliefs that conflict with naturalistic sitivity scores as high as 3 if they found the motivational conceptions of the world; Lobato, Mendoza, Sims, & Chin, quotations to be very profound (i.e. a rating of 5), despite 2014). Pennycook and colleagues (2015) found that analyti- such participants failing to realise that the PPBS statements cal thinkers perceived PPBS statements as less profound, were not at all profound. Conversely, participants who cor- whereas those endorsing epistemically suspect beliefs per- rectly realised that the PPBS was not at all profound (1) ceived PPBS statements as more profound. These findings could have a bullshit sensitivity score of only 1 if they rated have important implications for how we ascribe meaning all the motivational quotations as only somewhat profound and credibility to semantic information, as well as who may (2). The possibility of higher bullshit sensitivity scores for be more vulnerable to being misled by those who deal in those who could not discriminate correctly compared with bullshit. However, it would be helpful to elaborate on the na- those who could may have led to the equivocal results for ture of people’s susceptibility to PPBS and to understand this index. these individual differences in the context of established frameworks within personality psychology. Linking pseudo-profound bullshit susceptibility with established personality frameworks Why are some people misled by pseudo-profound The individual difference measures examined by Pennycook bullshit? and colleagues (2015) seem, at first sight, like a diffuse The individual differences correlated with the endorsement assortment of traits, abilities, and beliefs from two distinct of PBBS tell us who is more susceptible to PPBS clusters (i.e. epistemically suspect beliefs and analytical (Pennycook et al., 2015), but can they tell us why? As these thinking). However, epistemically suspect beliefs are closely authors noted, a tendency to rate PPBS as profound may be connected to a range of clinical symptoms, including magical explained either by a more liberal response bias (i.e. a lower thinking, unusual perceptions, and eccentric behaviour, threshold for rating any statement as profound) or by poorer which have been described in terms of ‘positive schizotypy’ discrimination (i.e. a lower ability to distinguish the pro- (DeYoung et al., 2012; Vollema & van den Bosch, 1995). In- found from the meaningless). Because analytical thinkers terestingly, there is an increasing body of evidence suggest- tend to be more sceptical, Pennycook and colleagues ing that both positive schizotypy and intelligence (which is (2015) expected that such individuals would
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