Misperceiving *BS* as Profound Is Associated with Favorable Views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism

[knapplc]

Presented without comment...

Yes, this is an actual peer reviewed article published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Yes, that is the actual title of the article.

A survey was conducted using 196 participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk. They were asked to rate the profoundness of "bullsh#t" statements, provided ratings of the Democratic and Republican candidates, and completed a test of political liberalism/conservatism.

The "bullsh#t" statements were crafted to appear meaningful/intelligent but actually be vacuous (e.g. "Imagination is inside exponential space time events"). A 5-point ranking was used to define the bullsh#t Receptivity scale (1 = not profound, 5 = very profound) for these pseudo-profound statements.

Favorable views of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump were significantly related to judging bullsh#t statements as profound. Cruz supporters had the strongest correlation while Trump supporters had the lowest. While there was a positive relationship for all three Democratic candidates (Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders), it was not significant. Sanders supporters had the lowest correlation.

Political conservatism was also positively associated with judging bullsh#t statements as profound. For some reason, the relationship for liberalism was not reported.

In contrast, favorable views of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders were not significantly related to judging mundane statements as profound. The more favorable views participants had of Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley, the more they saw profoundness in mundane statements. This was important in determining that people didn't find all statements profound.

 

 

LINK

[BigRedBuster]

I honestly have no clue what I just read.

[AR Husker Fan]

Well, a summary would be that the study attempted to determine how likely someone was to read a statement that was utter bullsh#t if examined with a critical and logical view, but thought instead it was a "profound" statement. The study concluded, as the title said, that "Misperceiving bullsh#t as Profound Is Associated with Favorable Views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism". In other words, folks that support Cruz, Rubio, Trump or conservatism in general fall for form over substance - they are easily fooled by nonsense statements and deemed those statements as "profound" instead of what they were - complete and utter bullsh#t.

[JJ Husker]

More evidence of the Vox Smug American Liberalism article that BRB posted a couple weeks ago???

[Scratchtown]

It's BS because the left says so

But if the right calls the left's BS it's disregarded

[JJ Husker]

I found their prediction rather telling;

 

"We predict that conservatives (in contrast to liberals) have a higher tendency for pseudo-profound bullsh#t receptivity."

 

And whaddya know, those were the results they got. Science! Why, why was that their prediction? Because they went into it thinking conservatives and the 3 republicans mentioned are full of BS (which they are) and obviously because they think the opposite of liberals and 3 dem candidates (even though they are full of BS as well). No way, absolutely no way they would've let the results show anything different. Like I said- Science.

[Moiraine]

Plos One is not a highly respected journal. Their review process is very quick and they accept 70% of the submissions.

[Moiraine]

I found their prediction rather telling;

 

"We predict that conservatives (in contrast to liberals) have a higher tendency for pseudo-profound bullsh#t receptivity."

 

And whaddya know, those were the results they got. Science! Why, why was that their prediction? Because they went into it thinking conservatives and the 3 republicans mentioned are full of BS (which they are) and obviously because they think the opposite of liberals and 3 dem candidates (even though they are full of BS as well). No way, absolutely no way they would've let the results show anything different. Like I said- Science.

 

 

I'm not that familiar with the field, so I don't know if it's normal to make a statement like that. Seems weird though.

 

But to the bolded, that's not what they did. It wasn't relevant in the study whether they thought the candidates are full of BS or not. They asked separate questions of the people. For instance they asked "How do you view Donald Trump?" and there were several choices ranging from unfavorable to favorable. Separately, they asked how people felt about statements, which from the questions I read are unrelated to politics. I haven't read many of the questions but I haven't seen any bias or leading questions in them.

 

The problem is it's hard to trust their methodology when they publish in this particular journal. I don't trust Plos One's reviewing process. Also: "For some reason, the relationship for liberalism was not reported."

 

 

Also, the study is something an intro stat student could have done. They didn't factor in education or income or anything like that. The people completing the survey are getting paid a very small amount of money by Amazon to do it. So if I were to guess I'd say it's people who need money. So poor people. Maybe there's a difference between poor Republicans and poor Democrats but not between Republicans and Democrats in general.

[Red Dead Redemption]

This is a very profound thread.

[Danny Bateman]

I found their prediction rather telling;

 

"We predict that conservatives (in contrast to liberals) have a higher tendency for pseudo-profound bullsh#t receptivity."

 

And whaddya know, those were the results they got. Science! Why, why was that their prediction? Because they went into it thinking conservatives and the 3 republicans mentioned are full of BS (which they are) and obviously because they think the opposite of liberals and 3 dem candidates (even though they are full of BS as well). No way, absolutely no way they would've let the results show anything different. Like I said- Science.

 

That's how scientific studies work.

 

You have to go in with a hypothesis and see if the results support or do not support that hypothesis. So they essentially had to think someone was full of BS going in. That was what they were trying to test.

 

Interesting to me that Sanders supporters had the lowest correlation.

[NUance]

 

I found their prediction rather telling;

 

"We predict that conservatives (in contrast to liberals) have a higher tendency for pseudo-profound bullsh#t receptivity."

 

And whaddya know, those were the results they got. Science! Why, why was that their prediction? Because they went into it thinking conservatives and the 3 republicans mentioned are full of BS (which they are) and obviously because they think the opposite of liberals and 3 dem candidates (even though they are full of BS as well). No way, absolutely no way they would've let the results show anything different. Like I said- Science.

 

That's how scientific studies work.

 

You have to go in with a hypothesis and see if the results support or do not support that hypothesis. So they essentially had to think someone was full of BS going in. That was what they were trying to test.

 

Interesting to me that Sanders supporters had the lowest correlation.

 

 

Sure, but they could have worded it in a more neutral way. Maybe something like: We hypothesize that people with higher pseudo-profound bullsh#t receptivity will tend to gravitate more towards one political inclination than the other.

[knapplc]

The wording on this study was, in my opinion, unnecessarily provocative. It would have gotten eyeballs on it without the accusatory tone.

[onlyHskrfaninIL]

But who created the term "micro-aggression"? BS as profound indeed.

[C N Red]

196 participants from Amazon mechanical turk???????? Ya, real great study. I'd be embarassed to even say you did the study. Its no study, just a witch hunt.

[Danny Bateman]

 

 

I found their prediction rather telling;

 

"We predict that conservatives (in contrast to liberals) have a higher tendency for pseudo-profound bullsh#t receptivity."

 

And whaddya know, those were the results they got. Science! Why, why was that their prediction? Because they went into it thinking conservatives and the 3 republicans mentioned are full of BS (which they are) and obviously because they think the opposite of liberals and 3 dem candidates (even though they are full of BS as well). No way, absolutely no way they would've let the results show anything different. Like I said- Science.

 

That's how scientific studies work.

 

You have to go in with a hypothesis and see if the results support or do not support that hypothesis. So they essentially had to think someone was full of BS going in. That was what they were trying to test.

 

Interesting to me that Sanders supporters had the lowest correlation.

 

 

Sure, but they could have worded it in a more neutral way. Maybe something like: We hypothesize that people with higher pseudo-profound bullsh#t receptivity will tend to gravitate more towards one political inclination than the other.

 

 

It's a garbage study, to be sure. But at least in my experience with studies, it's general policy to adopt a concrete hypothesis one way or the other. This means you wind up with less hypotheses like "We think people who _______ will be more inclined to X or Y" and more singular ones like "We think people who ______ will be more inclined to X."

 

It's just simpler to try to write up a paper either proving or disproving a singular guess than explain a preference for one of two choices.

 

It's just kind of scientific rote at this point.

 

I was just trying to explain general study policy. I'm in agreeance it's poorly done and as Knapp stated, probably just clickbait.