An introduction to the field of bullshitology

Seminar for the Luiss Management PhD program

6^th December 2022

Professor Ian P. McCarthy

A quick cognitive reflection test

• Three questions.
• Fifteen seconds to answer each question
• A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
• If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
• In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

Introduction

• What is bullshit?
• Why is it important to know what it is and study it?
• To be attentive to it soiling your research and your learning.
• To avoid producing and spreading it.
• What has research on bullshit looked at and found?
• Why people bullshit?
• Who bullshits?
• Who believes bullshit?
• How to deal with bullshit?
• Future research opportunities.

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An introduction to bullshit

• In small groups:
• Come up with a definition of bullshit?
• Provide some examples of bullshit.

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• How is bullshit different from lying?

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What is bullshit?

• The excretion from a male bovine.
• Versus:
• To talk foolishly, boastfully, or idly.
• To waffle.
• Spout rubbish, baloney and twaddle.
• To talk nonsense so as to deceive or mislead.
• Deception and misrepresentation
• Phoniness

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What is bullshit?

• Drawing on Frankfurt (2009), bullshit is when people and organizations make statements with no regard for the truth.
• McCarthy et al (2020) - the term bullshit comprises both the communicative act and the information in it.
• bullshit can be conveyed in:
• written form (e.g., emails, letters, reports), spoken form (e.g., conversations, speeches, audio/video recordings)
• graphical form (e.g., photographs, charts, diagrams).

Bullshitting versus lying

• Lying is an act concerned with the truth and involves trying to subvert it.
• A liar must know the truth to be able to lie.
• Bullshitting is done with no concern for the truth.
• A bullshitter has no regard for, and is not constrained by, truth.
• A bullshitter’s bullshit can sometimes turn out to be correct.
• Why is this?

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“Whereas the liar misrepresents the truth, the bullshitter ‘misrepresents what he is up to” (Frankfurt 2009: 13).

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” (Frankfurt 2009, 63)

What is bullshit? (McCarthy et al. 2020)

What is bullshit?

• In 2018, the U.S. President erroneously told the Canadian Prime Minister that the United States had a trade deficit with Canada.
• The U.S. President later admitted that he had no idea if there was a deficit.
• This freedom from truth means that leaders can say whatever it takes to further their agenda.

Some related concepts (McCarthy et al. 2020)

Some related concepts (McCarthy et al. 2020)

Why study bullshit?

• “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.” (Frankfurt 2009: 1)

Why study bullshit?

• And yet, until recently it had not received much research attention.
• Why is this?
• Because we thought we knew what it was.
• And we assumed it was relatively harmless, until
• social media, fake news, deep fakes, the covid-19 pandemic, and the acts of some leaders of countries and companies, showed otherwise.
• ‘bullshit’ was too impolite to study and write about?

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• So what else changed?

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For me it all started with ……

• Wondering why there was so much ‘lying’ happening in workplace meetings, committees and communications?
• And, why it was rarely called out and rejected?
• How was the lying impacting how we work?
• What could we do about it?

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• I then learnt that much of what I was observing was not lying, but was bullshit because I was directed to …..

Then I read Frankfurt (2009)

• “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.”
• “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.”
• “Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”

And then I read Spicer (2017)

• Sets out an agenda for reducing business bullshit.
• Links bullshit to phenomena such as management fashions and the use of jargon.
• “No longer is bullshit a handy supply of manure for fertilising new ideas. Instead, it can create a dangerous waste problem, which could make people and, indeed, the entire organisation profoundly ill” (p. 164).

As well as Bergstrom and West (2021)

Then the world starting noticing more

The rise of bullshitology

The rise of bullshitology

The rise of bullshitology

Why should academics care about bullshit?

• Why should we care?
• We are in the truth business.
• We are constrained by facts logic and theory.
• Bullshitters are not.
• We are not journalists, advertisers, politicians, entrepreneurs and the many other professions that are deemed more likely to produce and spread bullshit.
• To understand who does it, why they do it, how they do it, how it flows, and its impacts on society.

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Why do people bullshit?

• In small groups consider why people bullshit?
• To pursue an agenda.
• What sort of agenda?
• To impress
• To persuade
• To evade

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• Bullshit is used to influence, stimulate, escape and succeed.

Why people bullshit → types of bullshits

• Pseudo-profound bullshit: apparently impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually empty (Pennycook et al. 2015)
• Persuasive bullshitting: motivated by a desire to impress or persuade (Littrell et al. 2021)
• Evasive bullshitting: a strategic circumvention of the truth (Littrell et al. 2021)
• Social bullshitting: teasing, exaggerating, joking and trolling during interactions (McCarthy et al. 2020)
• All of above types are intentional
• The first three are increasingly Machiavellian in nature.

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Why people bullshit → types of bullshits

• Unintended bullshitting (McCarthy et al 2020) is due to:
• being unprepared, gullible, sloppy, or deluded.
• Hanlon’s razor and the unknowing production and spread of workplace bullshit:
• Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by:
• Incompetence
• Lack of support
• Stress
• Ignorance
• Confusion
• Sloppiness
• Shyness

People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration. (Bertrand Russell)

Playing the Bullshit Game (Spicer 2020)

• Bullshitting can be seen as a social practice.
• Bullshitting is done to ‘fit in’ and look good.
• Noisy chat based ignorance solicits and spreads bullshit.

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Antecedents of bullshitting (Petrocelli, 2018)

• Used lab experiments to identify two conditions that facilitate the production of bullshit:
• lack of functional knowledge
• lack of social accountability

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• Takeaways:
• People bullshit more when the social expectations to have an opinion are high.
• People appear to bullshit freely when they expect to get away with it.
• Bullshitting is significantly reduced when these two factors jointly don’t exist.
• Depends on how knowledgeable or un-knowledgeable the audience is.

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Bullshitting frequency (Littrell et al. 2020)

• Measured the frequency which individuals engage in persuasive and evasive bullshitting.
• Bullshitting frequency correlated negatively with intelligence, honesty, and sincerity.
• Focused on Western and English-speaking cultures.

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Bullshitting ability (Turpin et al. 2021)

• Assess participants’ ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit as an honest signal of their intelligence.
• Find that bullshit ability is associated with an individual’s intelligence.
• And individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be more intelligent.
• The ability to produce satisfying bullshit may help individuals to socialize by impressing.

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Bullshitters: who are they? (Jerrim et al. 2019)

• Examined 63,000 teenagers’ propensity to claim expertise in three mathematics constructs that do not really exist.
• Bullshitters exhibit high levels of overconfidence and believe they work hard, persevere at tasks, and are popular amongst their peers.

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• Male teenagers are more likely to bullshit than female teenagers.
• More prevalent in those from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

Bullshitters: who are they? Oh !

• Teenagers in North America are bigger bullshitters than teenagers in England, Australia and New Zealand, while those in Ireland and Scotland are the least likely bullshit.

Bright side of management bullshit (Christensen, et al. 2019)

• Consider desirable bullshit in terms of the managerial practices of:
• Commanding: an alternative to command and control. A workaround for managers. A sense of commanding without commands.
• Strategizing: articulating inspiring futuristic visions without fully understanding what is going on.
• Managers bullshit to help legitimize their jobs and their organization’s goals.
• Bullshit helps reduce tensions that come with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Why do people believe bullshit?

• In small groups discuss what impacts a person’s receptivity to believe bullshit?
• Age?
• Gender?
• Education?
• Profession?
• National culture?

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Bullshit receptivity (Pennycook et al., 2015)

• Experiments where participants rate the profundity of statements:
• some of the statements were AI-generated and others taken from alternative medicine advocates
• The statements are completely meaningless, but meant to sound meaningful i.e., pseudo-profound bullshit.
• A low capacity (i.e., determined using a cognitive reflection test) for analytical thinking is the main determinant of bullshit receptivity.
• Also, paranormal beliefs, and ‘an uncritically open mind’.
• We are more sensitive to bullshit when we have an analytic cognitive mindset, critical thinking and skepticism.

The answers to the quick cognitive reflection test (Frederick 2005)

• A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
• 5 cents

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• If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
• 5 minutes

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• In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?
• 47 days.

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Can you bullshit a bullshitter? (Littrell 2021)

• Persuasive bullshitters were more receptive to bullshit.
• Evasive bullshitters were less susceptibility to the bullshit and were even less susceptibility to believing fake news.
• Persuasive bullshitters were also more overconfident in their intellectual abilities.
• They could be experiencing a Dunning-Kruger type effect, and suffer from a “bullshit blindspot”,

The Einstein Effect: We are more likely to believe a bullshit statement if we think it is made by a scientist (Hoogeveen et al. 2022)

How to deal with bullshit?

• In small groups discuss ways to reduce and prevent the production and flow of bullshit?
• How?
• Who?
• Where?

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A scale for measuring bullshit in the workplace (Ferreira et al. 2022)

• The Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale is a multi-item scale for assessing employee perceptions of bullshit in their workplace.
• Based on three factors:
• Regard for truth
• The boss
• Bullshit language

Pre-empt and debunk (Lewandowsky et al. 2020)

• Fact-checking reducing people’s beliefs in false statements.
• Received bullshit will continue to influence people’s thinking even when they are later made aware it is false.
• This is known as the ‘continued influence effect’ (Johnson & Seifert 1994).
• Be preemptive and ‘inoculate’ people to make them less susceptible to bullshit.
• Ask people to reflect on an idea before accepting it.

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Pre-empt and debunk (Lewandowsky et al. 2020)

Pre-empt and debunk (Lewandowsky et al. 2020)

Pre-empt and debunk (Lewandowsky et al. 2020)

• Illusory truth effect:
• Repeated information is more likely to be judged true than novel information because it has become more familiar.
• Familiarity backfire effect
• Repetition makes information more familiar.
• And familiar information is generally perceived to be more truthful than novel information.
• At first it was thought that when a myth gets repeated via debunking, the risk is that repetition may make a myth more familiar.
• This has been found not to be true.

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The C.R.A.P. Framework (McCarthy et al. 2020)

Should we teach students to bullshit (McEachern & McEachern 2022)

Some don’ts for practice (McCarthy et al. 2020)

1. Don’t confuse bullshit with lying and others forms of misrepresentation.
2. Don’t forget that bullshit is often appealing and sometimes turns out to be true.
3. Don’t forget that people knowingly and unknowingly bullshit.
4. Don't listen and read with an uncritically open mind.
5. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” and “I don’t understand”.

Some dos for practice (McCarthy et al. 2020)

1. Do call for or question logic and evidence, while rejecting anecdotes.
2. Do be alert to inconsistencies, biases and vague and jargon-filled statements.
3. Do proportion your belief to the availability of evidence and its veracity.
4. Do prohibit excessive jargon, statistical trickery, and pointless meetings and committees.
5. Do understand and adjust how colleagues ‘act’ toward bullshit.

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If you don’t know, then just say that

Research Opportunities

In small groups consider what questions, puzzles or problems you think might be worthy of future bullshitology research attention?

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Research Opportunities

• How has (and is) the amount (and type) of bullshit changing over time?
• Test Frankfurt's insidious bullshit hypothesis i.e., is bullshit more damaging than lying?
• Does bullshit spread faster than truth?
• Does bullshit help people and organizations succeed better?
• Is there evidence of the effect of bullshit on people, teams and organizations? Is it bad/good/contingent?
• What other social, organizational and leadership practices might be determinants for workplace bullshit?
• Which professions and job roles are most and least “full of it”?

“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” (Alberto Brandolini)

This is an interesting and compelling statement, but if there is no evidence to support this claim, then it is a great example of “bullshit about bullshit”.

References

• Bergstrom, C.T. and West, J.D., 2021. Calling bullshit: the art of skepticism in a data-driven world. Random House Trade Paperbacks.
• Ferreira, C., Hannah, D., McCarthy, I., Pitt, L. and Lord Ferguson, S., 2022. This place is full of it: Towards an organizational bullshit perception scale. Psychological Reports, 125(1), pp.448-463. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294120978162
• Frankfurt, H.G., 2009. On bullshit. Princeton University Press
• Frederick, Shane (2005). "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 19 (4): 25–42. doi:10.1257/089533005775196732.
• Hoogeveen, S., Haaf, J.M., Bulbulia, J.A., Ross, R.M., McKay, R., Altay, S., Bendixen, T., Berniūnas, R., Cheshin, A., Gentili, C. and Georgescu, R., 2022. The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(4), pp.523-535.
• Johnson, H. M., & Seifert, C. M. (1994). Sources of the continued influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later inferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(6), 1420-1436.
• Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U.K., Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U.K.H. and Newman, E.J., 2020. Under the Hood of The Debunking Handbook 2020: A consensus-based handbook of recommendations for correcting or preventing misinformation.

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References

• Littrell, S., Risko, E.F. and Fugelsang, J.A., 2021. The bullshitting frequency scale: Development and psychometric properties. British Journal of Social Psychology, 60(1), pp.248-270.
• Littrell S, Risko EF, Fugelsang JA. 'You can't bullshit a bullshitter' (or can you?): Bullshitting frequency predicts receptivity to various types of misleading information. Br J Soc Psychol. 2021
• McCarthy, Ian P., David Hannah, Leyland F. Pitt, and Jane M. McCarthy. 2020. "Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit." Business Horizons 63, no. 3: 253-263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2020.01.001
• McEachern, P.J. and McEachern, R.W., 2022. Should we teach students how to bullshit?. Writing and Pedagogy.
• Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J.A., Barr, N., Koehler, D.J. and Fugelsang, J.A., 2015. On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. Judgment and Decision making, 10(6), pp.549-563.
• Petrocelli, J.V., 2018. Antecedents of bullshitting. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, pp.249-258.
• Spicer, A. 2020. Business bullshit. Routledge, 2017.
• Spicer, A., 2020. Playing the bullshit game: How empty and misleading communication takes over organizations. Organization Theory, 1(2), p.2631787720929704.
• Turpin, Martin Harry, Mane Kara-Yakoubian, Alexander C. Walker, Heather EK Walker, Jonathan A. Fugelsang, and Jennifer A. Stolz. "Bullshit ability as an honest signal of intelligence." Evolutionary Psychology 19, no. 2 (2021): 14747049211000317.