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Bullshit-sensitivity and cynicism are practically synomyms I'd say. It feels counter-intuitive to find cynicism positively correlated with prosocial behaviour (which the article defines as donating to and/or joining a charity.)
I think you can be extremely apt at detecting bullshit without being a cynic. In fact I think a lot, though certainly not all, of cynicism stems from the disappointment of having been fooled too much by bullshit.
As someone who has experience with both, my bullshit senses are tingling.
I am slightly confused by the selection of those sentences, the bullshit sentences barely make grammatical sense, while the profound sentences are honestly pretty banal and sound like things you'd find written on tote-bags sold in etsy stores. I found the study pretty interesting especially table 2 is extremely informative!
The bullshit sentences look like they were put together by a Markov chain.
> assessed participants’ bullshit-receptivity Deriving meaning from what others deem meaningless could be profound in itself?
- The unknown flees from the implausible.
- Unheard elephants are never green.
- Although many people seek apples, few seek the road.
- Judgement is like chewing on expensive rubber.
- A circle is a square with intention.
I am slightly confused by the selection of those sentences, the bullshit sentences barely make grammatical sense, while the profound sentences are honestly pretty banal and sound like things you'd find written on tote-bags sold in etsy stores. I found the study pretty interesting especially table 2 is extremely informative!
As someone who grew up and studied in Sweden I'd be surprised if a random selection of the population were able to parse those sentences well enough to make a qualified judgement to begin with. And then there's the question of how 'profound' the second set is to begin with..
A simple self-experiment if you haven't read the paper, find which of these sentences are bullshit. Answer in order without reading further ahead, and don't go back to change your answers (as to replicate experimental conditions). * 1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence. 2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty. 3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seek…
This one is classified bullshit, although I think it makes at least somewhat sense.
I feel like this is some meta-level test for the reader. Pseudo-profound bullshit statement: "Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior"; can the reader distinguish this bullshit paper from a profound paper?
I am slightly confused by the selection of those sentences, the bullshit sentences barely make grammatical sense, while the profound sentences are honestly pretty banal and sound like things you'd find written on tote-bags sold in etsy stores. I found the study pretty interesting especially table 2 is extremely informative!
This seems to just be a proxy that ends up measuring whether IQ is correlated to being prosocial