On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit

Judgment and Decision Making

Volumn 10, Issue 6, 2015, Pages 549-563

  Pennycook, Gordon ^a   Cheyne, James Allan ^a   Barr, Nathaniel ^b   Koehler, Derek J ^a   Fugelsang, Jonathan A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO   (Canada)

^b SHERIDAN COLLEGE   (Canada)

Author keywords

Analytic thinking; Bullshit; Bullshit detection; Complementary and alternative medicine; Conspiratorial ideation; Dual process theories; Religiosity; Supernatural beliefs

Indexed keywords

EID: 84949793565     PISSN: None     EISSN: 19302975     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Arthur, W., & Day, D. (1994). Development of a short form for the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices test. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 54, 395–403
2. Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 27, 713–770
3. Baron, J. (1985). Rationality and intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press
4. Baron, J., Scott, S., Fincher, K. S., & Metz, E. (2014). Why does the Cognitive Reflection Test (sometimes) predict utilitarian moral judgment (and other things)? Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 4, 265–284
5. Bar-Hillel, M., Maharshak, A., Moshinsky, A., & Nofech, R. (2012). A rose by any other name: A social-cognitive perspective on poets and poetry. Judgment and Decision Making, 7, 149–164
6. Black, M. (1983). The prevalence of Humbug and other essays. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.
7. Boyer, P. (1994). The naturalness of religious ideas: A cognitive theory of religion. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
8. Brotherton, R., French, C. C., & Pickering, A. D. (2013). Measuring belief in conspiracy theories: The generic conspiracist beliefs scale. Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, 4, 279. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00279
9. Browne, M., Thomson, P., Rockloff, M. J., & Pennycook, G. (2015). Going against the herd: Psychological and cultural factors underlying the “vaccination confidence gap”. PLoS ONE 10(9), e0132562. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132562
10. Buekens, F. & Boudry, M. (2015). The dark side of the long: Explaining the temptations of obscurantism. Theoria, 81, 126–142
11. Campitelli, G. & Gerrans, P. (2014). Does the cognitive reflection test measure cognitive reflection? A mathematical modeling approach. Memory & Cognition, 42, 434–447
12. Chiesi, F., Ciancaleoni, M., Galli, S., Morsanyi, K., & Primi, C. (2012). Item response theory analysis and differential item functioning across age, gender, and country of a short form of the Advanced Progressive Matrices. Learning and Individual Differences, 22, 390–396
13. Chopra, D. (1989). Quantum Healing. New York: Bantam Books
14. Chopra, D. (2008). The Soul of Leadership. New York: Harmony Books
15. De Neys, W. (2012). Bias and conflict: A case for logical intuitions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 28–38
16. De Neys, W. (2014). Conflict detection, dual processes, and logical intuitions: Some clarifications. Thinking & Reasoning, 20, 167–187
17. Empson, W. (1947). Seven Types of Ambiguity. Chatto & Windus, London
18. Evans, J. St. B. T., & Stanovich, K. E. (2013). Dual-process theories of higher cognition: Advancing the debate. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 8, 223–241
19. Forer, B. R., (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 118–123
20. Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive reflection and decision making. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19, 25–42
21. Frankfurt, H. G. (2005) On Bullshit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
22. Furnham, A., & Schofield, S. (1987). Accepting personality test feedback: A review of the Barnum effect. Current Psychological Research and Reviews, 6, 162–178
23. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336, 493–496
24. Gilbert, D. T. (1991). How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46, 107–119
25. Gilbert, D. T., Tafarodi, R. W., & Malone, P. S. (1993). You can’t not believe everything you read. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 221–233
26. Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528
27. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux
28. Lindeman, M. (2011). Biases in intuitive reasoning and belief in complementary and alternative medicine. Psychology & Health, 26, 371–82
29. Lindeman, M., & Aarnio, K. (2007). Superstitious, magical, and paranormal beliefs: An integrative model. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 731–744
30. Lindeman, M., Cederström, S., Simola, P., Simula, A., Ollikainen, S., & Riekki, T. (2008). Sentences with core knowledge violations increase the size of n400 among paranormal believers. Cortex, 44, 1307–1315
31. Lindeman, M., Svedholm-Hakkinen, A. M., & Lipsanen, J. (2015). Ontological confusions but not mentalizing abilities predict religious belief, paranormal beliefs, and belief in supernatural purpose. Cognition, 134, 63–76
32. Lipkus, I. M., Samsa, G., & Rimer, B. K. (2001). General performance on a numeracy scale among highly educated samples. Medical Decision Making, 21, 37–44
33. Lobato, E., Mendoza, J., Sims, V., & Chin, M. (2014). Examining the relationship between conspiracy theories, paranormal beliefs, and pseudoscience acceptance among a university population. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28, 617–625
34. Malhorta, N., Krosnick, J. A., & Haertel, E. (2007). The psychometric properties of the GSS Wordsum vocabulary test, GSS Methodology Report No. 111. Chicago: NORC
35. Meehl, P. E. (1956). Wanted—a good cookbook. American Psychologist, 11, 262–272
36. Pacini, R., & Epstein, S. (1999). The relation of rational and experiential information processing styles to personality, basic beliefs, and the ratio-bias phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 972–987
37. Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J. & Fugelsang, J. A. (2014). Cognitive style and religiosity: The role of conflict detection. Memory & Cognition, 42, 1–10
38. Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Seli, P., Koehler, D. J. & Fugelsang, J. A. (2012). Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief. Cognition, 123, 335–346
39. Pennycook, G., Fugelsang, J. A., & Koehler, D. J. (2015). What makes us think? A three-stage dual-process model of analytic engagement. Cognitive Psychology, 80, 34–72
40. Pennycook, G., Fugelsang, J. A., & Koehler, D. J. (in press). Everyday consequences of analytic thinking. Current Directions in Psychological Science
41. Perry, T. (1997). “So Rich, So Restless”. Los Angeles Times. 7 September
42. Sagan, C. (1996). The fine art of baloney detection. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, 201–218
43. Schwartz, L. M., Woloshin, S., Black, W. C., & Welch, H. G. (1997). The role of numeracy in understanding the benefit of screening mammography. Annals of Internal Medicine, 127, 966–972
44. Shenhav, A., Rand, D. G., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in god. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 423–428
45. Shermer, M. (2010). Deepakese: The Woo-Woo Master Deepak Chopra Speaks. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shermer/deepakese-the-woo-woo-mas_b_405114.html
46. Sokal, A. (2008). Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture. New York: Oxford
47. Sperber, D. (2010). The guru effect. Review of Philosophical Psychology, 1, 583–592
48. Stanovich, K. E. (2011). Rationality and the reflective mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
49. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2000). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 645–726
50. Svedholm, A. M., & Lindeman, M. (2013). The separate roles of the reflective mind and involuntary inhibitory control in gatekeeping paranormal beliefs and the underlying intuitive confusions. British Journal of Psychology, 3, 303–319
51. Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U. S., & Furnham, A. (2014). Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition, 133, 572–585
52. Tobacyk, J. (2004). A revised paranormal belief scale. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 23, 94–98
53. Toplak, M. V., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2011). The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks. Memory & Cognition, 39, 1275–1289
54. Toplak, M. V., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2014). Assessing miserly information processing: An expansion of the Cognitive Reflection Test. Thinking & Reasoning, 20, 147–168.