Bullshit Receptivity: Why We Trust the Wrong Words

Host Leslie Poston discusses “bullshit receptivity,” a peer-reviewed construct describing susceptibility to impressive-sounding but meaningless language. She highlights Cornell cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell’s studies in which over 1,000 office workers rated AI-generated corporate jargon alongside real executive quotes; those most impressed scored lowest on analytic thinking and workplace decision-making, and were more likely to amplify jargon in a feedback loop that rewards BS-producing leaders. Poston connects this to earlier work by Gordon Pennycook (University of Waterloo) on pseudo-profound statements and cognitive defaults like initial acceptance and weak conflict monitoring, and to research linking BS receptivity with overclaiming, poor metacognition, fake news vulnerability (Pennycook and Rand), political slogans, and “scientific” BS. She notes Brandolini’s Law and emphasizes practicing analytic thinking, including restating claims in plain language, citing the University of Washington’s “Calling Bullshit” course and mentioning future coverage of pre-bunking.

00:00 Welcome and Setup
00:41 Cornell Corporate BS Study
02:49 Feedback Loop and Examples
04:56 Waterloo Origins of BS Scale
06:12 Why We Fall for It
07:55 Metacognition and Overclaiming
08:41 BS in News and Politics
10:28 Scientific and General BS
11:52 Training Your BS Detector
13:50 Practical Plain Language Test
14:47 Wrap Up and Teaser

The studies referenced:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886926000620
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/03/workers-who-love-synergizing-paradigms-might-be-bad-their-jobs
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/judgment-and-decision-making/article/on-the-reception-and-detection-of-pseudoprofound-bullshit/0D3C87BCC238BCA38BC55E395BDC9999
https://sjdm.org/~baron/journal/20/200221/jdm200221.pdf
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202007/does-america-have-problem-bullshit-receptivity
https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/08/when-it-comes-to-the-academic-study-of-fake-news-bullshit-receptivity-is-a-thing/
https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/6565
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13546783.2022.2066724

UPDATED with notes from the study author: (Note: I love it when an author adds nuance! We lead with curiosity here and we know 15 - 25 minute episodic summaries can potentially overly-condense a topic.)

Replying to the LinkedIn post about this, Dr. Littrell said:

"Re: "The findings are consistent across every domain: the strongest predictor of whether someone catches BS is whether they engage analytic thinking or "go with their gut"."

There's a bit more to it than that. People can fall for BS through either mode of thinking (more "reflective" and more "intuitive"):

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546783.2023.2189163
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.4154

More detailed discussion here, for anyone interested: https://bullshitology.substack.com/p/brown-pilled-why-we-fall-for-bullshit"

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