Pseudo-profound statement attributed to the Dalai Lama seems even more profound: "We are non‐local beings that localize as a dot then inflate to become non‐local again. The universe is mirrored in us."

“Who said it?” How contextual information influences perceived profundity of meaningful quotes and pseudo‐profound bullshit. Vukašin Gligorić  Ana Vilotijević. Applied Cognitive Psychology, December 20 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3626

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.

4 GENERAL DISCUSSION

In the present research, we tried to add to the small amount of literature on pseudo‐profound bullshit, while offering a new paradigm. Across two studies, we demonstrated that pseudo‐profound bullshit is susceptible to the labeling effect—bullshit being rated as more profound when presented as being uttered by a famous author. On the contrary, this contextual effect for meaningful quotes was inconsistent, as profundity ratings were increased only in the second study.

The labeling effect for pseudo‐profound bullshit is similar to the ratings of poems attributed to famous or bogus poets (Bar‐Hillel et al., 2012). Although we did not investigate any underlying mechanisms of the effect, it is plausible to assume the similar process to those where expectation led to genuinely different feeling (e.g. Bar‐Hillel et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2006). That is, after seeing a famous author's name next to the statement, participants might have been primed by the author's name and construed the meaning in the statement. However, the power of different authorities remains; it may happen that one is seduced by an authority from an unfamiliar field (e.g., art/Dali), whereas this could not be the case for the familiar field (e.g., physics/Plank). Specifically, one of the directions for future research could be to examine whether certain authorities (i.e., based on occupation) have a larger or smaller impact on bullshit receptivity. Taken together, it would be beneficial to test whether this tendency is irrational or not (as in heuristics, for example).

Interestingly, increase in profundity was inconsistent for meaningful quotes as it emerged only in the second study. All meaningful quotes from Study 2 were taken as excerpts from particular authors' work, which makes them decontextualized. This might be the reason why there was a contextual effect on these quotes. As quotes usually depict the author's views represented by their own words on a certain topic (Conrad, 1999), this way of recruiting can constrain their application. Alternatively, short and widely applicable sayings (such as Latin phrases, e.g., “He conquers who conquers himself”) might be immune to the contextual effect due to their life‐oriented message and widespread use. This might be one of the avenues for future research.

Another possible path of label influence is through the contextualization of the statement. For example, when one reads a short story (or book excerpt), she might relate the bullshit to that story so that “non‐local beings that localize as a dot” actually relate to the protagonists of the story (e.g., signifying the old man's unimportance in the world). Even though our data do not support these conclusions, vignette condition had higher absolute ratings than the isolated condition. It might be the case that our short stores in Study 1 did not have enough literary value to increase the profundity. Although the vignette condition (book excerpt) improved ratings in Study 2, it also contained the author's name, making it impossible to distinguish whether effect occurred due to the author or the excerpt. However, this condition had higher absolute values than the author‐only condition, supporting our notions. These questions remain open for other researchers to answer.

Surprisingly, in Study 2, meaningful quotes and pseudo‐profound bullshit were rated as equally deep, which is in contrast to results from Study 1 and findings from bullshit research (e.g., Čavojova et al., 2018; Pennycook et al., 2015). One plausible reason is the selection of the deepest pseudo‐profound items from the original 30‐item scale. Higher mean profundity ratings for bullshit items in Study 2 (M = 3.2 compared with M = 2.9 in Study 1) support this notion. Therefore, although the same five pseudo‐profound items had similar ratings in two studies (M = 3.17 and M = 3.20), the mean bullshit score was lower in the first study as it contained other bullshit items that had lower ratings. Second, our selection of meaningful quotes does not necessarily guarantee their profundity—mean profundity ratings for meaningful quotes was lower in Study 2 (M = 3.3 compared with M = 3.7 in Study 1). That is, some of the meaningful quotes in Study 2 might seem like contemporary motivational quotes (e.g., “They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”) and therefore have lower ratings. Indeed, this quote had the lowest ratings along with the Dostoevsky's quote (“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”).

In conclusion, our results suggest that pseudo‐profound bullshit is susceptible to contextual effects—attributing a statement to a famous person alters its perception. Although it might be only economically exploited (as in the case of New Age leading figures), other kinds of bullshit (for example, political), might be more dangerous. Demonstrating how easily people might evaluate pseudo‐profound statements as more profound just because they were presented with an author's name; we should be aware of potential abuse of this type of effect.