Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

PLoS One. 2018 Jul 31;13(7):e0201474. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201474. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Bullshit-sensitivity is the ability to distinguish pseudo-profound bullshit sentences (e.g. "Your movement transforms universal observations") from genuinely profound sentences (e.g. "The person who never made a mistake never tried something new"). Although bullshit-sensitivity has been linked to other individual difference measures, it has not yet been shown to predict any actual behavior. We therefore conducted a survey study with over a thousand participants from a general sample of the Swedish population and assessed participants' bullshit-receptivity (i.e. their perceived meaningfulness of seven bullshit sentences) and profoundness-receptivity (i.e. their perceived meaningfulness of seven genuinely profound sentences), and used these variables to predict two types of prosocial behavior (self-reported donations and a decision to volunteer for charity). Despite bullshit-receptivity and profoundness-receptivity being positively correlated with each other, logistic regression analyses showed that profoundness-receptivity had a positive association whereas bullshit-receptivity had a negative association with both types of prosocial behavior. These relations held up for the most part when controlling for potentially intermediating factors such as cognitive ability, time spent completing the survey, sex, age, level of education, and religiosity. The results suggest that people who are better at distinguishing the pseudo-profound from the actually profound are more prosocial.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Emotions*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Models, Psychological*
  • Social Behavior*
  • Sweden
  • Verbal Behavior*

Grants and funding

Research grants given to Daniel Västfjäll from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (grant number P14-0978:1), and to Arvid Erlandsson from The Swedish Science Council (Vetenskapsrådet grant number 2017-01827) funded this research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.