This research systematically mapped the relationship between political ideology and receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit—that is, obscure sentences constructed to impress others rather than convey truth. Among Swedish adults ( N = 985), bullshit receptivity was (a) robustly positively associated with socially conservative (vs. liberal) self-placement, resistance to change, and particularly binding moral intuitions (loyalty, authority, purity); (b) associated with centrism on preference for equality and even leftism (when controlling for other aspects of ideology) on economic ideology self-placement; and (c) lowest among right-of-center social liberal voters and highest among left-wing green voters. Most of the results held up when we controlled for the perceived profundity of genuine aphorisms, cognitive reflection, numeracy, information processing bias, gender, age, education, religiosity, and spirituality. The results are supportive of theoretical accounts that posit ideological asymmetries in cognitive orientation, while also pointing to the existence of bullshit receptivity among both right- and left-wingers.

References

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D., Sanford, N. ( 1950 ). The authoritarian personality. New York, NY : Harper & Row .

Google Scholar

Aspelund, A., Lindeman, M., Verkasalo, M. ( 2013 ). Political conservatism and left-right orientation in 28 eastern and western countries . Political Psychology, 34, 409 - 417 . doi:10.1111/pops.12000

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Cochrane, C., Nevitte, N. ( 2009 ). Policy disagreement in advanced industrial states: The content and structure of left/right opinions . In Esmer, Y., Klingemann, H-D, Puranen, B. (Eds.), Religion, democratic values, and political conflict (pp. 119 - 145 ). Uppsala, Sweden : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis .

Google Scholar

Cokely, E. T., Galesic, M., Schulz, E., Ghazal, S., Garcia-Retamero, R. ( 2012 ). Measuring risk literacy: The Berlin numeracy test . Judgment and Decision Making, 7, 25 - 47 .

Google Scholar ISI

Conway, L. G., Gornick, L. J., Houck, S. C., Anderosn, C., Stockert, J., Sessoms, D., McCue, K. ( 2016 ). Are conservatives really more simple-minded than liberals? The domain specificity of complex thinking . Political Psychology, 37, 777 - 798 . doi:10.1111/pops.12304

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

DeYoung, C. G., Grazioplene, R. G., Peterson, J. B. ( 2012 ). From madness to genius: The Openness/Intellect trait domain as a paradoxical simplex . Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 63 - 78 . doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2011.12.003

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Ditto, P. H., Liu, B., Clark, C., Wojcik, S. P., Chen, E., Grady, R., Zinger, J. ( 2018 ). At least bias is bipartisan: A meta-analytic comparison of partisan bias in liberals and conservatives . Perspectives on Psychological Science. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/1745691617746796

Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Eidelman, S., Crandall, C. S., Goodman, J. A., Blanchar, J. C. ( 2012 ). Low-effort thought promotes social conservatism . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 808 - 820 . doi:10.1177/0146167212439213

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Erlandsson, A., Nilsson, A., Tinghög, G., Västfjäll, D. ( 2018 ). Bullshit sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior . PLoS ONE, 13(7), e0201474 . doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0201474

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline

Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., Buchner, A. ( 2007 ). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences . Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175 - 191 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Federico, C. M., Malka, A. ( 2018 ). The contingent, contextual nature of the relationship between needs for security and certainty and political preferences: Evidence and implications . Political Psychology, 39( Suppl. 1 ), 3 - 48 . doi:10.1111/pops.12477

Google Scholar Crossref

Feldman, S., Johnston, C. ( 2014 ). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity . Political Psychology, 35, 337 - 358 . doi:10.1111/pops.12055

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Frankfurt, H. G. ( 2005 ). On bullshit. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Frederick, S. ( 2005 ). Cognitive reflection and decision making . Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19, 25 - 42 . doi:10.1257/089533005775196732

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Frimer, J., Skitka, L. J., Motyl, M. ( 2017 ). Liberals and conservatives are similarly motivated to avoid exposure to one another’s opinions . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 1 - 12 . doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2017.04.003

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Gignac, G. E., Szodorai, E. T. ( 2016 ). Effect size guidelines for individual differences researchers . Personality and Individual Differences, 102, 74 - 78 . doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.069

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Graham, J., Haidt, J., Nosek, B. A. ( 2009 ). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1029 - 1046 . doi:10.1037/a0015141

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Greenberg, J., Jonas, E. ( 2003 ). Psychological motives and political orientation—The left, the right, and the rigid: Comment on Jost et al. (2003) . Psychological Bulletin, 129, 376 - 382 . doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.376

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Haidt, J., Graham, J. ( 2007 ). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize . Social Justice Research, 20, 98 - 116 . doi:10.1007/s11211-007-0034-z

Google Scholar Crossref

Haidt, J., Graham, J., Joseph, C. ( 2009 ). Above and below left-right: Ideological narratives and moral foundations . Psychological Inquiry, 20, 110 - 119 . doi:10.1080/10478400903028573

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Holm, S. ( 1979 ). A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure . Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, 6, 65 - 70 .

Google Scholar ISI

Johnston, C. D., Lavine, H. G., Federico, C. M. ( 2017 ). Open versus closed: Personality, identity, and the politics of redistribution. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., Sulloway, F. J. ( 2003 ). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition . Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339 - 375 . doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Jost, J. T., Krochik, M. ( 2014 ). Ideological differences in epistemic motivation: Implications for attitude structure, depth of information processing, susceptibility to persuasion, and stereotyping . In Elliot, A. J. (Ed.), Advances in Motivation Science (pp. 181 - 231 ). San Diego, CA : Elsevier . doi:10.1016/bs.adms.2014.08.005

Google Scholar Crossref

Jost, J. T., Sterling, J., Stern, C. ( 2016 ). Getting closure on conservatism, or the politics of epistemic and existential motivation . In Kopetz, C. E., Fishbach, A. (Eds.), The motivation-cognition interface: From the lab to the real world: A Festschrift in honor of Arie W. Kruglanski (pp. 56 - 87 ). New York, NY : Routledge .

Google Scholar

Jost, J. T., van der Linden, S., Panagopoulos, C., Hardin, C. D. ( 2018 ). Ideological asymmetries in conformity, desire for shared reality, and the spread of misinformation . Current Opinion in Psychology, 23, 77 - 83 . doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.01.003

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline

Kahan, D. M . ( 2013 ). Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection . Judgment and Decision Making, 8(4), 407 - 424 .

Google Scholar ISI

Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Dawson, E. C., Slovic, P. ( 2017 ). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government . Behavioural Public Policy, 1, 54 - 86 . doi:10.1017/bpp.2016.2

Google Scholar Crossref

Lammers, J., Koch, A., Conway, P., Brandt, M. J. ( 2017 ). The political domain appears simpler to the politically extreme than to political moderates . Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 612 - 622 . doi:10.1177/1948550616678456

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Lind, T., Erlandsson, A., Västfjäll, D., Tinghög, G. ( 2018 ). Motivated reasoning when assessing the effects of refugee intake . Behavioral Public Policy. Advance online publication. doi:10.1017/bpp.2018.41

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline

Malka, A., Osborne, D., Soto, C. J., Greaves, L. M., Sibley, C. G., Lelkes, Y. ( 2016 ). Binding moral foundations and the narrowing of ideological conflict to the traditional morality domain . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 1243 - 1257 . doi:10.1177/0146167216653936

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Malka, A., Soto, C. J. ( 2015 ). Rigidity of the economic right? Menu-independent and menu-dependent influences of psychological dispositions on political attitudes . Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 137 - 142 . doi:10.1177/0963721414556340

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Malka, A., Soto, C. J., Inzlicht, M., Lelkes, Y. ( 2014 ). Do needs for security and certainty predict cultural and economic conservatism? A cross-national analysis . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 1031 - 1051 . doi:10.1037/a0036170

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Nilsson, A., Erlandsson, A. ( 2015 ). The moral foundations taxonomy: Structural validity and relation to political ideology in Sweden . Personality and Individual Differences, 76, 28 - 32 . doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.049

Google Scholar Crossref

Nilsson, A., Erlandsson, A., Västfjäll, D. ( 2018 , July 2 ). Moral foundations theory and the psychology of charitable giving. doi:10.31234/osf.io/wcsq6

Google Scholar Crossref

Nilsson, A., Jost, J. T. ( 2017 , November 4 ). Rediscovering Tomkins’ polarity theory: Humanism, normativism, and the bipolar structure of left-right ideology in the U.S. and Sweden. doi:10.31234/osf.io/9zbq3

Google Scholar Crossref

Nilsson, A., Strupp-Levitsky, M. ( 2016 ). Humanistic and normativistic metaphysics, epistemology, and conative orientation: Two fundamental systems of meaning . Personality and Individual Differences, 100, 85 - 94 . doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.01.050

Google Scholar Crossref

Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J., Fugelsang, J. A. ( 2015 ). On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit . Judgment and Decision Making, 10, 549 - 563 .

Google Scholar ISI

Pennycook, G., Rand, D. G. ( 2018 a). Cognitive reflection and the 2016 US presidential election . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0146167218783192

Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Pennycook, G., Rand, D. G. ( 2018 b, May 23 ). Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3023545

Google Scholar Crossref

Petrocelli, J. V. ( 2018 ). Antecedents of bullshitting . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 249 - 258 . doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2018.03.004

Google Scholar Crossref

Pfattheicher, S., Schindler, S. ( 2016 ). Misperceiving bullshit as profound is associated with favorable views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism . PLoS ONE, 11(4), e0153419 . doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0153419

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline

Piedmont, R. L. ( 1999 ). Does spirituality represent the sixth factor of personality? Spiritual transcendence and the five-factor model . Journal of Personality, 67, 985 - 1013 . doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00080

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Revelle, W. ( 2018 ). Psych: Procedures for personality and psychological research. Evanston, IL : Northwestern University . Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=psych

Google Scholar

Schwartz, L. M., Woloshin, S., Black, W. C., Welch, H. G. ( 1997 ). The role of numeracy in understanding the benefit of screening mammography . Annals of Internal Medicine, 127, 966 - 972 . doi:10.7326/0003-4819-127-11-199712010-00003

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Schwartz, S. H., Caprara, G. V., Vecchione, M. ( 2010 ). Basic personal values, core political values, and voting: A longitudinal analysis . Political Psychology, 31, 421 - 452 . doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00764.x

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Sidanius, J. ( 1988 ). Political sophistication and political deviance: A structural equation examination of context theory . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 37 - 51 . doi:10.1037/0022-3514.55.1.37

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Simonsohn, U. ( 2018 ). Two-lines: A valid alternative to the invalid testing of U-shaped relationships with quadratic regressions. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/2515245918805755

Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Ståhl, T., van Prooijen, J.-W. ( 2018 ). Epistemic rationality: Skepticism toward unfounded beliefs requires sufficient cognitive ability and motivation to be rational . Personality and Individual Differences, 122, 155 - 163 . doi:10.1016/j.paid.2017.10.026

Google Scholar Crossref

Stenner, K. ( 2009 ). Three kinds of “conservatism.” Psychological Inquiry, 20, 142 - 159 . doi:10.1080/10478400903028615

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Sterling, J., Jost, J. T., Pennycook, G. ( 2016 ). Are neoliberals more susceptible to bullshit? Judgment and Decision Making, 11, 352 - 360 .

Google Scholar

Swedish Skeptics Association . ( 2015 , October 29 ). In Ingemyr, M. (Ed.), VoF-undersökningen 2015 [ The VoF-survey 2015 ]. Retrieved from http://www.vof.se/undersokningen-2015

Google Scholar

Tetlock, P. E. ( 1984 ). Cognitive style and political belief systems in the British House of commons . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 363 - 375 . doi:10.1037/0022-3514.46.2.365

Google Scholar Crossref

Tetlock, P. E., Armor, D., Peterson, R. S. ( 1994 ). The slavery debate in antebellum America: Cognitive style, value conflict, and the limits of compromise . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 115 - 126 . doi:10.1037/0022-3514.66.1.115

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Van Hiel, A., Mervielde, I. ( 2003 ). The measurement of cognitive complexity and its relationship with political extremism . Political Psychology, 24, 781 - 801 . doi:10.1046/j.1467-9221.2003.00354.x

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

van Prooijen, J.-W., Krouwel, A. P. M. ( 2017 ). Extreme political beliefs predict dogmatic intolerance . Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 292 - 300 . doi:10.1177/1948550616671403

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Weber, C. R., Federico, C. M. ( 2013 ). Moral foundations and heterogeneity in ideological preferences . Political Psychology, 34, 107 - 126 . doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00922.x

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Yilmaz, O., Saribay, S. A. ( 2018 ). Lower levels of resistance to change (but not opposition to equality) is related to analytic cognitive style . Social Psychology, 49, 65 - 75 . doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000328

Google Scholar Crossref