> They also identify two types of bullshitting— persuasive and evasive. “Persuasive” uses misleading exaggerations and embellishments to impress, persuade, or fit in with others, while ‘evasive’ involves giving irrelevant, evasive responses in situations where frankness might result in hurt feelings or reputational harm.
> the researchers examined the relations between participants’ self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines.
By their own definition, it seems like the people most inclined to impress and mislead in situations where frankness might result in reputational harm(in other words a real BSer) wouldn't admit to engaging in BS behavior at a rate above a non-bullshitter.
From the press release: "Ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines." Does that mean the people being tested were just shown the headline? Usually, that's not enough information to decide if something is bullshit. So, were they basically asking their subjects to guess?
The actual paper [1] is paywalled. US$12.00. The press release does not link to the paper, nor does it give a full citation, but it does give enough info that the paper can be found.
A useful metric is that if something makes a strong but unusual claim, and the supporting data is hard to access, it's usually bullshit.
> the researchers examined the relations between participants’ self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines.
By their own definition, it seems like the people most inclined to impress and mislead in situations where frankness might result in reputational harm(in other words a real BSer) wouldn't admit to engaging in BS behavior at a rate above a non-bullshitter.