People who frequently mislead others are less able to distinguish fact from fiction, according to University of Waterloo researchers
From: University of Waterloo
March
8, 2021 -- People who frequently try to impress or persuade others with
misleading exaggerations and distortions are themselves more likely to be
fooled by impressive-sounding misinformation, new research from the University
of Waterloo shows.
The researchers found that people who
frequently engage in “persuasive bullshitting” were actually quite poor at
identifying it. Specifically, they had trouble distinguishing intentionally
profound or scientifically accurate fact from impressive but meaningless
fiction. Importantly, these frequent BSers are also much more likely to fall
for fake news headlines.
“It probably seems intuitive to believe
that you can’t bullshit a bullshitter, but our research suggests that this
isn’t actually the case,” says Shane Littrell, lead author of the paper and
cognitive psychology PhD candidate at Waterloo. “In fact, it appears that the
biggest purveyors of persuasive bullshit are ironically some of the ones most
likely to fall for it.”
The researchers define “bullshit” as
information designed to impress, persuade, or otherwise mislead people that is
often constructed without concern for the truth. 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.
In a series of studies conducted with
over 800 participants from the US and Canada, 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.
Participants also completed measures of cognitive ability, metacognitive
insight, intellectual overconfidence, and reflective thinking.
“We found that the more frequently
someone engages in persuasive bullshitting, the more likely they are to be
duped by various types of misleading information regardless of their cognitive
ability, engagement in reflective thinking, or metacognitive skills,” Littrell
said. “Persuasive BSers seem to mistake superficial profoundness for actual
profoundness. So, if something simply sounds profound, truthful, or accurate to
them that means it really is. But evasive bullshitters were much better at
making this distinction.”
The research may help shed light on the
processes underlying the spread of some types of misinformation, which could
have important implications for the fight against this growing problem.
The study, You can’t bullshit a
bullshitter (or can you?): Bullshitting frequency predicts receptivity to
various types of misleading information, authored by Littrell and Waterloo’s
Faculty of Arts professors Evan Risko and Jonathan Fugelsang, appears in
the British Journal of Social Psychology.
No comments:
Post a Comment