You gotta love a study on bullshit.

I’m all for humble inquiry and respectful dialogue, but sometimes you just gotta call bullshit for what it is: bullshit. As Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West have shown, calling bullshit is a necessary skill in a modern world where it’s easy to produce and distribute bullshit, which is “language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.”  But if bullshit is indeed bullshit, then why do people fall for it?

Well, Aspernas and colleagues have published a really intriguing article, with an exploratory Study 1 and then a pre-registered Study 2, delving into how particular kinds of relativistic thinking (i.e., the idea that truth may not be objective but rather it can only be determined relative to something) may make people more receptive to bullshit and conspiracy theories. They found evidence for two kinds of relativistic thinking: subjectivism (if something feels true to you, then it’s true) and cultural relativism (truth is determined by cultures or societies). Subjectivism seems particularly troublesome because it suggests anyone can claim they “know” the “truth” by saying “it just feels right to me.” Cultural relativism is less problematic, to me, given that truth is often determined based on cultural norms and practices. “Science” is a culture and has certain ways of determining “truth.” “Religion” is a different culture, with different ways of determining “truth.” At least each culture has some agreed-upon methods for determining truth, which can be vetted and shared.

In short, Aspernas and colleagues found that people high on a measure of subjectivity were more likely to believe bullshit and conspiracy theories, whereas belief in cultural relativism was not related to bullshit or conspiracy theory receptivity. So, mommas, don’t let you babies grow up to be subjectivists.

Of course, this is one study with relatively new/refined measures, so there’s much more work to be done to refine the ideas and instruments, test the boundary conditions of the relationships, develop theory for these relations, etc. But evidence that adheres with hypotheses asserted in a pre-registered study certainly don’t seem like bullshit, to me.