Machiavellianism is associated with bullshitting, according to new psychology research

People high in Machiavellianism are more likely to engage in bullshitting, or distorting the truth to achieve their own ends, according to new research published in the British Journal of Social Psychology. The study also indicates that a facet of Machiavellianism is linked to a reduced receptivity to bullshit.

The study’s corresponding author, Christian Blötner (@cbloetner) of the University of Hagen in Germany, was doing research about Machiavellianism when he came across a study that examined the relationship between producing bullshit and being receptive to bullshit, which inspired the current work.

“Machiavellianism is characterized by deception and manipulation at others’ expense as well as skepticism and distrust of humankind,” Blötner explained. “Bullshitting can be understood a form of deception, making it a valuable topic for my studies on Machiavellianism.”

“The majority of studies on bullshit information dealt with rather general constructs of personality psychology but little was known about specific traits, such as Machiavellianism or other antagonistic traits. So, we planned and conducted a study on the links of our motivational model of Machiavellianism with production and reception of bullshit.

The study included 525 participants, who ranged in age from 18 to 66. The researchers were particularly interested how bullshitting was related to two different facets of Machiavellianism. Machiavellian approach refers to the tendency to engage in deceit in order to gain resources (“I tend to manipulate others to get my way”), while Machiavellian avoidance refers to the tendency to take a skeptical view of humanity (“Anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble”).

Free daily newsletter

The researchers found that Machiavellian approach was positively associated with persuasive bullshitting. In other words, those higher in Machiavellian approach were more likely to agree with statements such as “In my daily life, I embellish, exaggerate, or otherwise stretch the truth just a little when I want to impress the person or people I’m talking to.” Machiavellian avoidance, on the other hand, was positively associated with evasive bullshitting, or stretching the truth to avoid trouble and prevent individual disadvantages.

Those high in Machiavellian avoidance (but not Machiavellian approach) were also better at differentiating meaningful statements from pseudo-profound bullshit. That is, they were less likely to view nonsensical statements such as “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty” as profound.

“To me, it was really intriguing to see that different contents of our model of Machiavellianism were predictive of producing different sorts of misinformation,” Blötner said. “Likewise, only few studies have examined whether there are different links with falling for others’ misinformation within the construct of Machiavellianism.”

The findings have some practical implications. “In a nutshell, don’t believe everything someone tells you,” Blötner told PsyPost. “Spend time and effort reflecting on phony, inflated, and impressive claims. Be at least a bit skeptical of what others tell you, especially concerning very impressive claims.”

The researchers had also included a measure of receptivity to pseudo-scientific bullshit, which includes statements such as “Energy can deteriorate based on closed-circuit alliterations of an afocal system.” But there was only a weak correlation between receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit and receptivity to pseudo-scientific bullshit. The participants also struggled to differentiate scientific facts from pseudo-scientific bullshit.

“Originally, we assessed both pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific bullshit,” Blötner explained. “That is, the tendency to ascribe meaning or profundity to statements that appear to stem from philosophic or scientific fields, respectively.”

“We did so to have a wide array of ‘bullshitty’ contents and because we expected that individuals who are prone to fall for one sort of bullshit also fall for the other. However, we were surprised to see that scientific and philosophic bullshit contents were virtually unrelated. Therefore, our findings suggest that you can identify pseudo-scientific bullshit as such but get fooled by pseudo-profound bullshit and vice versa. Of note, these findings need replication.”

The findings held even after controlling for cognitive ability. But the researchers noted that their study includes some limitations. For example, they used a cross-sectional design, meaning that data was only collected at one point in time, and relied on self-report questionnaires.

“We cannot ensure that the findings can be interpreted in a causal way,” Blötner said. “Likewise, we only have self-reports of the frequency of producing bullshit, but we do not know whether those engaging in bullshitting frequently also succeed at it. We only had two relatively narrow and specific areas of bullshit (pseudo-motivational/-profound quotes and pseudo-scientific), but bullshit might be ubiquitous. Thus, our findings require replications in more naturalistic settings in which the participants are provided with bullshit from another person (as opposed to scientifically produced bullshit) and need to discern this ‘real bullshit’ from facts.”

The study, “It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver: Machiavellianism is associated with producing but not necessarily with falling for bullshit“, was authored by Christian Blötner and Sebastian Bergold.