Page:On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-profound Bullshit.pdf/3

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2015 2015). Moreover, conflict detection is viewed as an important low-level cognitive factor that causes at least some people to engage deliberative, analytic reasoning processes (Pennycook, Fugelsang & Koehler, 2015). With respect to bullshit, there are likely many factors that may lead an individual to successfully detect the need for skepticism that will depend on the type of bullshit encountered and the bullshit context. For example, the source (perhaps a known bullshitter) may be particularly untrustworthy. Or, perhaps, the bullshit may conflict with common knowledge or specific knowledge or expertise of the recipient. For the present investigation, we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit that is missing any obvious external cue that skepticism is required. The goal is to investigate whether there are consistent and meaningful individual differences in the ability to spontaneously discern or detect pseudo-profound bullshit. Unlike response bias, this mechanism involves distinguishing bullshit from non-bullshit.

Here we report four studies in which we ask participants to rate pseudo-profound bullshit and other statements on a profundity scale. Our primary goal is to establish this as a legitimate measure of bullshit receptivity. For this, bullshit profundity ratings are correlated with a collection of individual difference factors that are conceptually related to pseudo-profound bullshit in a variety of ways.

4.1Analytic thinking

Dual-process theories of reasoning and decision making distinguish between intuitive ("Type 1") processes that are autonomously cued and reflective ("Type 2") processes that are effortful, typically deliberative, and require working memory (Evans & Stanovich, 2013). A crucial finding that has emerged from the dual-process literature is that the ability to reason involves a discretionary aspect (Stanovich, 2011; Stanovich & West, 2000); a distinction that has long historical precedent (Baron, 1985). Namely, to be a good reasoner, one must have both the capacity to do whatever computation is necessary (i.e., cognitive ability, intelligence) and the willingness to engage deliberative reasoning processes (i.e., analytic cognitive style; thinking disposition). Moreover, individual differences in analytic cognitive style are positively correlated with conflict detection effects in reasoning research (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler & Fugelsang, 2014; Pennycook, et al., 2015), indicating that more analytic individuals are either better able to detect conflict during reasoning or are more responsive to such conflict. Consistent with Sagan’s (1996) argument that critical thinking facilitates "baloney detection", we posit that reflective thinking should be linked to bullshit receptivity, such that people who are better at solving reasoning problems should be more likely to consider the specific meaning of the presented statements (or lack thereof) and judge failure to discern meaning as a possible defect of the statement rather than of themselves. In other words, more analytic individuals should be more likely to detect the need for additional scrutiny when exposed to pseudo-profound bullshit. More intuitive individuals, in contrast, should respond based on a sort of first impression, which will be inflated due to the vagueness of the pseudo-profound bullshit. Analytic thinking is thus the primary focus of our investigation, as it is most directly related to the proposed ability to detect blatant bullshit.

4.2Ontological confusions

Both children and adults tend to confuse aspects of reality (i.e., "core knowledge") in systematic ways (Lindeman, Svedholm-Hakkinen & Lipsanen, 2015). Any category mistake involving property differences between animate and inanimate or mental and physical, as examples, constitutes an ontological confusion. Consider the belief that prayers have the capacity to heal (i.e., spiritual healing). Such beliefs are taken to result from conflation of mental phenomenon, which are subjective and immaterial, and physical phenomenon, which are objective and material (Lindeman, Svedholm-Hakkinen & Lipsanen, 2015). On a dual-process view, ontological confusions constitute a failure to reflect on and inhibit such intuitive ontological confusions (Svedholm & Lindeman, 2013). Ontological confusions may also be supported by a bias toward believing the literal truth of statements. Thus, ontological confusions are conceptually related to both detection and response bias as mechanisms that may underlie bullshit receptivity. As such, the propensity to endorse ontological confusions should be linked to higher levels of bullshit receptivity.

4.3Epistemically suspect beliefs

Beliefs that conflict with common naturalistic conceptions of the world have been labelled epistemically suspect (e.g., Lobato et al., 2014; Pennycook, Fugelsang & Koehler, in press). For example, the belief in angels (and the corresponding belief that they can move through walls) conflicts with the common folk-mechanical belief that things cannot pass through solid objects (Pennycook et al., 2014). Epistemically suspect beliefs, once formed, are often accompanied by an unwillingness to critically reflect on such beliefs. Indeed, reflective thinkers are less likely to be religious and paranormal believers (e.g., Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook et al., 2012; Shenhav, Rand & Greene, 2012), and are less likely to engage in conspiratorial ideation (Swami et al., 2014) or believe in the efficacy of alternative medicine (Browne et al., 2015;