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Social perception and influence of lies vs. bullshit: a test of the insidious bullshit hypothesis

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Abstract

Although a ubiquitous social behavior, little is known about bullshitting (i.e., communicating with no regard for truth and/or evidence) and its effects on social perception and influence. Although bullshit and lies are viewed as undesirable, the distinction may have important implications for social influence. Frankfurt’s (1986) insidious bullshit hypothesis (i.e., bullshitting is evaluated less negatively, but more insidious, than lying) is examined in light of social perception (i.e., evaluation and perceived motives; Experiment 1) and social influence (Experiment 2). Results suggest bullshitting is evaluated less negatively than lying and identifies ignorance, dishonesty, and opinion expression as mediators of a bullshit/lie-evaluation link. Furthermore, relative to lies, bullshit appears to have a more potent impact on that which is perceived to be true as well as attitudes formed for novel attitude objects.

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Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the Center for Open Science/Open Science Framework repository, https://osf.io/zg5rp/?view_only=0b66497da25f4b889d17609ff262f1d1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, P.O. Box 7778, Winston-Salem, NC, 27109, USA

    John V. Petrocelli, Haley E. Silverman & Samantha X. Shang

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  1. John V. Petrocelli
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  2. Haley E. Silverman
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  3. Samantha X. Shang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to John V. Petrocelli.

Ethics declarations

This research involved Human Participants and was approved by the Human Subjects Committee of the Institutional Review Board of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC.

Conflict of Interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Footnotes

1Each of the nine causal ascriptions was developed following a brief survey. Survey respondents (25 college students) were presented with the two scenarios. Respondents were then asked two open-ended questions: “Do you believe bullshitting (communicating with little to no regard for established knowledge or evidence) is as bad/harmful as is lying?” and “Why?” We note that many of the nine causal ascriptions have some conceptual overlap with Ferreira et al.’s (in press) three-factor model of organizational bullshit, including regard for truth, the boss, and bullshit language.

2All measures, manipulations, and exclusions in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 have been disclosed, as well as the method of determining the final sample size. In each experiment, data were first collected and then analyzed; no data were collected following the data analysis.

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Petrocelli, J.V., Silverman, H.E. & Shang, S.X. Social perception and influence of lies vs. bullshit: a test of the insidious bullshit hypothesis. Curr Psychol 42, 9609–9617 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02243-z

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