A series of three studies published in Applied Cognitive Psychology found that explanatory reflection—that is, critically thinking about, and being able to explain to others, one’s reasons for particular beliefs or behaviors—reduced receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit, but had no effect for scientific bullshit or fake news.
“We had previously published a paper demonstrating that some people have a ‘bullshit blind spot,’ meaning that they not only don’t realize how bad they are at falling for bullshit, they also mistakenly believe they’re better at spotting it than the average person,” said study author Shane Littrell, PhD (@MetacogniShane), a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
“There is also some previous work by other researchers that claims that people fall for bullshit and certain types of misinformation largely because they fail to engage in reflective, analytic thinking when exposed to the BS. Unfortunately, most of this work is based on correlations rather than experimental evidence.”
“We wondered if people in general, but especially people with a ‘bullshit blind spot,’ could use analytic thinking to improve their ability to detect and reject bullshit. So, our goal was to experimentally put this to the test and find out whether getting people to engage in reflective, analytic thinking when evaluating bullshit and fake news would decrease how persuasive or convincing it is to them.”
“There’s other work that’s shown that misinformation is more persuasive and convincing when it comes from perceived authoritative sources like spiritual or religious leaders, politicians, celebrities, etc. This is called ‘the guru effect.’ So, we wanted to find out if getting people to engage in reflective thinking could also counteract ‘guru effects’ that might occur when bullshit comes from purported experts.”
Study 1 included 136 participants from the US and Canada, recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. They were tasked with rating the profoundness of 10 statements, including five pseudo-profound statements and five popular motivational quotes on a 5-point scale. Next, they engaged in an explanatory reflection task, writing explanations for why they found each statement profound or not. This was followed by a re-rating of the profoundness.
Study 2 involved two separate experiments (2a and 2b), with final samples of 143 participants for Experiment 2a and 138 for Experiment 2b. The procedure mirrored that of Study 1, with the addition of scientific statements and the use of a 7-point rating scale. In Study 2a, participants rated the profoundness of pseudo-profound and motivational statements, while in Study 2b, they gave truthfulness ratings for scientific bullshit and real scientific statements.
Study 3 also comprised two experiments (3a and 3b) with final samples of 130 and 112 participants respectively. Participants rated the accuracy of fake and real news headlines on a 7-point scale, before and after the same reflection task used in previous studies. The fake news headlines were derived from Snopes.com.
Across the studies, “half of the participants rated these statements as if they came from anonymous sources. The statements that the other half of the participants rated were attributed to various expert or authoritative sources, such as famous political or cultural leaders (for the pseudo-profound bullshit), famous scientists (for the pseudo-scientific bullshit), or mainstream news sources (for the fake news headlines),” Littrell explained.
“As far as the results go, I guess you could say that I’ve got good news and bad news,” Littrell told PsyPost.
“The good news is that, when a person is exposed to certain types of bullshit claims and other misinformation, if they stop to reflect and analytically think about it, this can help decrease how persuasive and appealing the bullshit is. By doing so, the person might realize that there are certain aspects of the claim that seem sketchy, which might prompt them to doubt it and seek out fact-checks from a reliable source. Or, they might already have relevant knowledge that helps them realize that the claim is false or at least not as strongly supported as the person bullshitting them is trying to make it seem.”
“The bad news is that this may only work for bullshit or misinformation about topics the person already has background knowledge in, or for claims that are delivered in an unconvincing ‘bullshitty’ way that would alert the listener that something about it is fishy. For bullshit that involves more complex or technical topics (e.g., bullshit that invokes scientific concepts and jargon), or bullshit that would require some level of expertise or broad knowledge to spot (e.g., fake news headlines about current events), then ‘thinking harder’ or ‘thinking more critically’ about it may not have much of an effect. In such cases, if a person feels like they don’t know enough to judge the information (to either believe it or reject it), they may be more likely to base their level of belief on what a perceived expert says about it.”
“And, unfortunately, bullshit from perceived experts is usually perceived as more persuasive and convincing. And, equally as unfortunate, we also found that critically reflecting on pseudo-scientific bullshit and fake news that comes from perceived experts and authoritative sources wasn’t very effective at reducing how persuasive or appealing the BS was. In fact, in some cases, pseudo-scientific bullshit and fake news from experts was nearly as persuasive and convincing as truthful statements from an anonymous source, even after people critically reflected on it. This finding was unsettling to me, to say the least, and highlights just how important it is to hold experts, authorities, and leaders accountable for the accuracy of what they say, given how much power they possess to irresponsibly misinform and mislead the public.”
I asked Littrell what questions still need answering. He said, “Well, the type of reflective, analytic thinking we had people engage in when evaluating the bullshit is called ‘explanatory reflection.’ Basically, we asked them to explain, in as much detail as possible, what the bullshit/headline meant and why they rated it the way that they did. It could be that there are ways of analytically reflecting on bullshit and misinformation that would be more effective at undermining it.”
“For instance, if we asked people to think about counterarguments (e.g., why it might be wrong), or to focus specifically on sources of evidence for the claims, etc., these types of approaches might yield different results. Also, we used politically neutral bullshit and fake news. There’s a lot of research showing that belief in some types of misinformation is deeply rooted in political partisanship and ideology, so future work should test the effects of different types of reflective, analytic thinking on the persuasiveness of politically and/or ideologically charged bullshit to see if the results are different.”
“I think our results highlight the fact there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to reducing the influence of bullshit and other forms of misinformation. Whether it’s bullshit posts on social media, biased media coverage, flashy consumer marketing, or just someone we know bullshitting us, our ability to detect it and reject it depends on several factors – including what type of bullshit it is – and sometimes these factors are outside our control.”
The researcher reflected, “It’s impossible to know everything about everything and sometimes we might trust the wrong people. But Carl Sagan shared a great Latin proverb in ‘The Demon-Haunted World’ that’s stuck with me for years: ubi dubium, ibi libertas which means, ‘where there is doubt, there is freedom.’ So, a great first step to reducing our chances of being misled, and the advice I give everyone, is to practice being more intellectually humble in our day-to-day lives; be more attentive to and skeptical of the information we’re exposed to. As I often say, ‘what if I’m wrong?’ should be the loudest thing the little voice in the back of your head shouts at you every day.”
The research, “Not all bullshit pondered is tossed: Reflection decreases receptivity to some types of misleading information but not others”, was authored by Shane Littrell, Ethan A. Meyers, and Jonathan A. Fugelsang.
