Finding meaning in the clouds: Illusory pattern perception predicts receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated a link between illusory pattern perception and various irrational beliefs. On this basis, we hypothesized that participants who displayed greater degrees of illusory pattern perception would also be more likely to rate pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound. We find support for this prediction across three experiments (N = 627) and four distinct measures of pattern perception. We further demonstrate that this observed relation is restricted to illusory pattern perception, with participants displaying greater endorsement of non-illusory patterns being no more likely to rate pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound. Additionally, this relation is not a product of a general proclivity to rate all statements as profound and is not accounted for by individual differences in analytic thinking. Overall, we demonstrate that individuals with a tendency to go beyond the available data such that they uncritically endorse patterns where no patterns exist are also more likely to create and endorse false-meaning in meaningless pseudo-profound statements. These findings are discussed in the context of a proposed framework that views individuals' receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit as, in part, an unfortunate consequence of an otherwise adaptive process: that of pattern perception.

Full text

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019, pp. 109–119
Finding meaning in the clouds: Illusory pattern perception predicts
receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit
Alexander C. Walker∗Martin Harry Turpin†Jennifer A. Stolz†Jonathan A. Fugelsang†
Derek J. Koehler†
Abstract
Previous research has demonstrated a link between illusory pattern perception and various irrational beliefs. On this basis,
we hypothesized that participants who displayed greater degrees of illusory pattern perception would also be more likely to
rate pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound. We find support for this prediction across three experiments (N = 627)
and four distinct measures of pattern perception. We further demonstrate that this observed relation is restricted to illusory
pattern perception, with participants displaying greater endorsement of non-illusory patterns being no more likely to rate
pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound. Additionally, this relation is not a product of a general proclivity to rate
all statements as profound and is not accounted for by individual differences in analytic thinking. Overall, we demonstrate
that individuals with a tendency to go beyond the available data such that they uncritically endorse patterns where no patterns
exist are also more likely to create and endorse false-meaning in meaningless pseudo-profound statements. These findings are
discussed in the context of a proposed framework that views individuals’ receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit as, in part, an
unfortunate consequence of an otherwise adaptive process: that of pattern perception.
Keywords: pseudo-profound bullshit, bullshit receptivity, illusory pattern perception, irrational belief
1 Introduction
“Bullshit is everywhere.” – George Carlin
This statement may be truer today than ever before, as tech-
nological advances have allowed for information to spread
faster and farther than ever before. Included in this ex-
pansion of information is likely an increase in peoples’ ex-
posure to bullshit. While many people may believe that
they can reliably detect and resist bullshit, empirical find-
ings suggest otherwise (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler
& Fugelsang, 2015a; Pennycook & Rand, 2018; Pfatthe-
This research was supported by grants from The Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Copyright: © 2019. The authors license this article under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
∗Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON,
Canada N2L 3G1. Email: a24walke@uwaterloo.ca.
†Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.
icher & Schindler, 2016; Sterling, Jost & Pennycook, 2016).
For example, an initial investigation of people’s receptivity
to pseudo-profound bullshit by Pennycook and colleagues
(2015a) demonstrated how people frequently rate these su-
perficially impressive yet vacuous statements as profound.
Furthermore, studies have reported initial evidence for how
receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit relates to real-world
beliefs, such as beliefs about political ideologies and can-
didates (Pfattheicher & Schindler, 2016; Sterling, Jost &
Pennycook, 2016), conspiracy and supernatural beliefs (Pen-
nycook et al. 2015a), and beliefs about the accuracy of “fake
news” (Pennycook & Rand, 2018). Despite bullshit repre-
senting a real, prevalent, and consequential phenomenon,
little research has been conducted on the topic. The current
article furthers the investigation of pseudo-profound bullshit
in two ways: First, we propose that peoples’ susceptibility to
pseudo-profound bullshit arises in part as an unfortunate con-
sequence of an otherwise adaptive behaviour, that of pattern
perception; second, congruent with this proposal, we inves-
109

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 110
tigate whether individuals susceptible to endorsing illusory
patterns are more receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit.
1.1 Pseudo-profound bullshit
Initial investigations of bullshit, specifically of the pseudo-
profound variety, have utilized Frankfurt’s (2005) concep-
tion of bullshit as an absence of concern for the truth. That
is, according to Frankfurt, bullshit is not about falsity but
rather fakery; bullshit may be true, false, or meaningless,
what makes a claim bullshit is an implied yet artificial atten-
tion to the truth. Consistent with this description of bullshit,
Pennycook and colleagues (2015a) generated a list of super-
ficially impressive statements that implied yet did not contain
either truth or meaning by having a computer program ran-
domly arrange a set of profound-sounding words in a way
that maintained proper syntactic structure (see Dalton, 2016,
for a comment, and Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler &
Fugelsang, 2016, for a response).
In addition to demonstrating peoples’ receptiveness to
meaningless pseudo-profound bullshit statements, Penny-
cook and colleagues (2015a) revealed how various individual
differences were associated with bullshit receptivity. Specif-
ically, it was found that those more receptive to bullshit were
less analytic thinkers (e.g., scored lower on the Cognitive
Reflection Test), scored lower in measures of cognitive abil-
ity (e.g., the Wordsum test and Raven’s Advanced Progres-
sive Matrices), and were more likely to hold religious, con-
spiratorial, and paranormal beliefs. Two mechanisms were
proposed to explain participants’ endorsement of pseudo-
profound bullshit. First, some participants were shown to
possess a general tendency to afford any and all statements
some level of profundity (e.g., mundane statements such
as “Some things have very distinct smells”). The results of
Pennycook and colleagues suggest that this gullible tendency
towards ascribing profoundness to even the most mundane of
statements is one component of bullshit receptivity. Second,
individual differences in analytic thinking (as measured by
the Cognitive Reflection Test and a “Heuristics and Biases”
battery) were found to be associated with bullshit recep-
tivity. Specifically, those with a propensity for analytic (as
opposed to intuitive) thinking were found to be less receptive
to pseudo-profound bullshit. Thus, another explanation put
forth by Pennycook and colleagues is that individuals dif-
fer with regards to their ability to detect bullshit, with more
analytic thinkers being more likely to detect and critically
reflect on the presented pseudo-profound bullshit statements
leading to lower ratings of profundity. The primary goal
of this paper is to propose a third compatible mechanism
to explain individual differences in receptivity to pseudo-
profound bullshit: the illusory perception of patterns.
1.2 Illusory pattern perception
The ability to perceive patterns and form meaningful con-
nections between stimuli in our environment is clearly evolu-
tionarily advantageous (Beck & Forstmeier, 2007; Mattson,
2014; Shermer, 2011). For example, Mattson (2014) claims
that superior pattern processing capabilities are essential for
a variety of higher cognitive functions (e.g., imagination and
invention) and likewise, credits these capabilities as funda-
mental to the technological progress humans have enjoyed.
Relatedly, he argues that evolved superior pattern processing
abilities are a primary reason why human cognition greatly
exceeds the capabilities of lower species. Due to the adap-
tive nature of pattern perception, it has been claimed that
we are the descendants of those best able to detect patterns
(Shermer, 2011).
Nevertheless, our proclivity for detecting patterns comes
with a cost, as we often find it difficult to distinguish be-
tween real and illusory patterns. Therefore, the same adap-
tive processes that allow us to perceive patterns and identify
meaningful connections between stimuli in our environment
also leads us to sometimes perceive illusory patterns and
consequently endorse false beliefs about reality. However,
when comparing the consequences of failing to detect a real
and informative pattern with those of endorsing an illusory
pattern, one of these errors may frequently loom larger than
the other. For example, failing to connect a rustling in the
grass with the presence of a dangerous predator has more
dire consequences than mistakenly attributing movement in
the grass to a predator and misguidedly escaping from a
gust of wind. Using an evolutionary model, Biologist Foster
and Kokko (2009) demonstrated how natural selection can
favour strategies that involve the frequent endorsement of
illusory patterns in order to ensure successful detection of
meaningful patterns that offer large reproductive and survival
benefits. Additionally, beliefs based on illusory patterns can
even be advantageous if they disrupt aversive feelings, such
as overwhelming thoughts of lacking control in an unpre-
dictable world (Hogg, Adelman & Blagg, 2010; Whitson &
Galinsky, 2008). This asymmetry of consequences between
missing a real pattern and endorsing an illusory one is one
reason humans are said to have evolved a “believing-brain”
with a proclivity for pattern perception and a susceptibil-
ity to being fooled by illusory patterns (Beck & Forstmeier,
2007; Foster & Kokko, 2009; Shermer, 2011). Thus, not un-
like the adaptive heuristics that guide decision-making, yet
predictably lead to certain biases, pattern perception may
represent an adaptive function at the heart of both rational
and irrational beliefs about how stimuli are connected in the
environments that we inhabit.
Illusory pattern perception includes the perception of con-
nections between unrelated stimuli as well as the perception
of patterns within random stimuli. One reason for the occur-
rence of illusory pattern perception is the fact that individ-

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 111
uals often have difficulty accepting that ordered events can
emerge from random processes. For example, when asked to
produce random sequences, people often produce far more
variation (and therefore fewer “runs”) than would be created
by a truly random process (Falk & Konold, 1997). What
follows, is that when people encounter random sequences
that coincidentally maintain some order (e.g., symmetry in
a series of coin tosses) they may ascribe a meaningful non-
random process as its source (Gilovich, Vallone & Tversky,
1985).
People’s tendency to engage in illusory pattern perception
has been shown to be associated with various irrational be-
liefs (Blackmore & Moore, 1994; Van Harreveld, Rutjens,
Schneider, Nohlen & Keskinis, 2014; Van Prooijen, Douglas
& Inocencio, 2018; Wiseman & Watt, 2006). For example,
Van Prooijen, Douglas and Inocencio (2018), found that in-
dividuals who perceive more illusory patterns are also more
likely to endorse conspiracy and supernatural beliefs. Re-
lated to this association between illusory pattern perception
and irrational belief is the finding that lacking control in-
creases illusory pattern perception (Van Harreveld et al.,
2014; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). Whitson and Galin-
sky (2008) demonstrate that those induced to feel a lack of
control perceive more illusory patterns and engage in more
conspiratorial and superstitious thinking. On the basis of
this evidence they argue that feeling a lack of control in
one’s environment is so aversive that individuals will often
endorse illusory patterns and irrational beliefs in order to
diminish feelings of lacking control and return to the more
pleasant view that one’s environment is predictable. Consis-
tent with this argument is additional evidence demonstrating
that lacking control increases conspiracy (Sullivan, Landau
& Rothschild, 2010; Van Prooijen & Acker, 2015) and su-
pernatural beliefs (Kay, Gaucher, McGregor & Nash, 2010;
Laurin, Kay & Moscovitch, 2008). Therefore, irrational be-
liefs may not only arise as the result of a believing-brain with
a proclivity towards pattern perception, but also as a com-
pensatory strategy that seeks to endorse patterns (illusory or
not) in order to alleviate aversive states, such as feeling a
lack of control in an unpredictable environment.
1.3 The current study
The current study investigates how individual differences in
pattern perception relate to differences in pseudo-profound
bullshit receptivity. While previous studies have observed
a positive relation between illusory pattern perception and
various irrational beliefs (e.g., conspiracy and supernatural
beliefs; Van Harreveld et al., 2014; Van Prooijen et al., 2018)
no study has examined the relation between pattern percep-
tion and bullshit receptivity. Bullshit is distinct from other
irrational beliefs on two dimensions. First, bullshit as con-
ceived of by Frankfurt (2005) is disinterested in the specific
truth or untruth of a given claim. That is, the primary goal
of a bullshitter is to be persuasive, without concern for the
validity of their claims. In contrast, irrational beliefs involve
individuals endorsing beliefs that are specifically concerned
with making truth claims. For example, the belief that the
United States government is covering up its own involvement
in the 2001 Islamic terrorist attacks against the World Trade
Centre. In this case, those with a belief in this conspiracy
are insisting that there is a truth to be discovered that is
merely being covered up by a government’s deception. This
point leads into a second distinguishing feature of bullshit:
specificity. Continuing with the example of the 911 attacks,
endorsing this belief comes along with endorsing a specific
set of rules for how the world and governments operate. Bull-
shit receptivity, however, requires only the vague perception
that there is something meaningful being communicated by
the bullshitter. Bullshit receptivity could be an early con-
tributor to the eventual adoption of an irrational belief, but
there is no reason a priori to assume that they are identical.
Despite being distinguished from other irrational beliefs,
we expect that bullshit receptivity will relate to illusory pat-
tern perception in a familiar way. Specifically, we hypoth-
esize that individuals susceptible to endorsing illusory pat-
terns will be more receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit.
This hypothesis is consistent with our view of receptivity to
pseudo-profound bullshit as arising in part as an unfortunate
consequence of an otherwise adaptive process: the uncriti-
cal perception of patterns in our environment. Therefore, we
believe that individuals with a greater tendency to go beyond
the available data and uncritically endorse patterns where no
patterns exist will also be more likely to create and endorse
false-meaning in meaningless pseudo-profound statements.
Importantly, we expect this relation to remain after con-
trolling for individual differences in analytic thinking. Con-
trolling for analytic thinking is important as individual dif-
ferences in analytic thinking have been shown to relate to
a host of irrational beliefs, including conspiracy and super-
natural thinking (Pennycook, Fugelsang & Koehler, 2015b;
Shenhav, Rand & Greene, 2012; Swami, Voracek, Stieger,
Tran, & Furnham, 2014). Therefore, it is possible that previ-
ous positive associations observed between illusory pattern
perception and various irrational beliefs are simply a result
of those with an intuitive (as opposed to analytic) thinking
style being more likely to endorse illusory patterns as well
as irrational beliefs. Lastly, we expect illusory pattern per-
ception to share an association with bullshit sensitivity, a
measure of participants’ ability to distinguish between le-
gitimately meaningful motivational quotations and pseudo-
profound bullshit statements. That is, we believe that indi-
vidual differences in illusory pattern perception will relate
specifically to the endorsement of meaningless statements as
profound as opposed to relating to an increase in profundity
ratings in general.
In Experiments 1 and 2 we build on two experiments from
Van Prooijen and colleagues (2018), which examined the

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 112
relation between participants’ endorsements of illusory pat-
terns and their level of conspiracy and supernatural belief.
Importantly, we modified these experiments in order to assess
the research questions at hand by replacing items assessing
participants’ conspiracy and supernatural beliefs with a pro-
fundity judgment task featuring both pseudo-profound bull-
shit statements and motivational quotations. Furthermore,
we added in a measure of analytic thinking in order to assess
and control for individual differences in thinking style. In
Experiment 3 we improve upon these first two experiments
by utilizing two new measures of pattern perception which
more concretely and objectively feature both real and illu-
sory patterns. These measures of pattern perception allow
us to more convincingly distinguish between how individual
differences in illusory, as opposed to non-illusory, pattern
perception relate to differences in bullshit receptivity and
bullshit sensitivity. Taken together, the current study utilizes
four distinct measures of pattern perception to conduct an
initial investigation of how individual differences in the en-
dorsement of both illusory and non-illusory (Experiments 2
and 3) patterns predicts individuals’ receptivity to pseudo-
profound bullshit.
2 Study 1
2.1 Method
2.1.1 Participants
A sample of 201 participants were recruited from Ama-
zon Mechanical Turk and received $2.00 upon completion
of a 15-minute online questionnaire. Across all three ex-
periments, participants were recruited under the condition
that they be U.S. residents and possess a Mechanical Turk
HIT approval rate greater than or equal to 95%. All ex-
periments reported in the current study were preregistered
through Open Science Framework.1
2.1.2 Measures
Pattern perception. To assess participants’ degree of il-
lusory pattern perception we employed a pattern percep-
tion measure used by Van Prooijen and colleagues (2018).
Specifically, this measure indexes the degree to which par-
ticipants find it difficult to accept that ordered or partially
ordered sequences can arise from random processes. In this
task, participants rated the extent to which they felt that
1We preregistered all methods, hypotheses, and analyses for each
of our three experiments through Open Science Framework: Regis-
tration forms for all three reported experiments can be viewed by
following the links below (Experiment 1: https://osf.io/rxtn9/?view_
only=a1a69426948e4df8b67f7ce48fe21e36, Experiment 2: https://osf.
io/fpr32/?view_only=8f1a964fa76e4a8ca574d71292ae5ca0, Experiment 3:
https://osf.io/x9vue/?view_only=36854c9508d3428ab31d816a7fd5ce92).
randomly generated coin flip sequences were random or pre-
determined on a 7-point scale (1 = completely random, 7
= completely determined). A total of 11 pattern perception
items were presented to participants. The first ten items
featured unique ten-flip coin sequences (e.g., HTHHTTT-
THH), whereas the final item presented all previously seen
sequences together and asked participants to rate the random-
ness of the 100 coin flip sequence. Overall, responses given
to all 11 items were averaged to form an 11-item pattern per-
ception score. A full list of items (for all measures reported
in the current study) can be viewed in the supplementary
materials.
Bullshit Receptivity Scale. The Bullshit Receptivity
(BSR) scale, taken from Pennycook and colleagues (2015a),
was administered to participants in Experiment 1. This scale
consists of ten pseudo-profound bullshit statements orig-
inally obtained from two websites (http://wisdomofchopra.
com and http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/) able to create mean-
ingless statements by randomly arranging a list of profound-
sounding words together in a way that retains syntactic struc-
ture. Participants rated the profundity of each statement
using a 5-point scale (1 = Not at all profound, 5 = Very pro-
found). A BSR score for each participant was calculated by
averaging the profundity ratings given to the ten presented
pseudo-profound bullshit statements.
Motivational Quotation Scale. To contrast the meaning-
less statements featured in the BSR, the motivational quo-
tation scale, originating from Pennycook and colleagues
(2015a), was administered to participants. This scale con-
sisted of ten motivational quotations originally obtained via
an internet search. Importantly, unlike the statements fea-
tured in the BSR, these ten statements were constructed with
a clear intention of meaning. Thus, unlike the presented
BSR statements, these statements were intended to represent
“truly” meaningful statements for which the majority of peo-
ple could reasonably endorse as profound. Participants rated
the profundity of each motivational statement using the same
5-point scale used to assess BSR items. Likewise, partic-
ipants’ profundity ratings to the ten presented motivational
quotations were averaged to create a motivational quotation
scale score for each participant.
Bullshit sensitivity. Bullshit sensitivity is a measure of a
participant’s ability to distinguish pseudo-profound bullshit
from meaningfully profound motivational quotations (Pen-
nycook et al., 2015a). Bullshit sensitivity was computed by
subtracting participants’ mean profundity ratings given to
motivational quotations from their mean profundity ratings
given to pseudo-profound bullshit statements. Higher scores
indicate less sensitivity in detecting bullshit.

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 113
Table 1: Experiment 1 Correlations. (Cronbach’s alphas in parentheses.)
M SD 1 2 3 4 5
1. Pattern Perception 3.20 1.16 (.86)
2. BSR 2.31 0.97 .35∗∗∗ (.93)
3. Motivational quotations 3.13 0.83 .17∗
.49∗∗∗ (.87)
4. CRT 1.84 1.47 −.23∗∗ −.37∗∗∗ −.18∗(.72)
5. BS Sensitivity (Var2−Var3) −0.82 0.91 .21∗∗
.61∗∗∗ −.39∗∗∗ −.22∗∗ −
Note. Pearson correlations (Experiment 1; N= 201). BSR = Bullshit Receptivity scale; CRT =
Cognitive Reflection Test. BS Sensitivity = Participants’ mean BSR profundity ratings minus their
mean motivational quotation profundity ratings. ∗∗∗ p< .001, ∗∗ p< .01, ∗p< .05.
Cognitive Reflection Test. The Cognitive Reflection Test
(CRT; Frederick, 2005) was designed to evaluate individuals’
ability to suppress an intuitive incorrect response in favour
of a deliberative correct answer. Participants were presented
with four CRT items taken from Toplak, West and Stanovich,
(2014) and Primi, Morsanyi, Chiesi, Donati and Hamilton
(2016). The number of correct responses was summed for
each participant, giving each participant a CRT score that
ranged from zero to four.
2.1.3 Procedure
Participants completed an online questionnaire in which they
completed all four measures described above. Specifically,
participants began by completing eleven pattern perception
items. Next, participants were asked to rate the profundity
of twenty statements (BSR and motivational quotations) that
were presented in a randomized order. Finally, participants
completed a nine-item belief in existing conspiracy theories
scale2and responded to four CRT items.
2.2 Results and discussion
The results of Experiment 1 are shown in Table 1. As ex-
pected, illusory pattern perception was positively correlated
with participants’ BSR scores (r(191) = .35, p< .001). That
is, participants who rated randomly generated coin toss se-
quences as more determined were also more likely to rate
BSR items as profound. A weaker relation was observed
between illusory pattern perception and motivational quota-
tions (r(189) = .17, p= .020), demonstrating that illusory
pattern perception also shared a positive association with
profundity ratings for meaningful statements. Nevertheless,
a positive relation was observed between bullshit sensitivity
(the difference between BSR and motivational quotations)
2This scale, presented exclusively in Experiment 1, was included for
reasons peripheral to the main objective of the current study and therefore
will not be discussed further in the main body of this manuscript. However,
see our supplementary materials for a set of analyses featuring this scale.
and illusory pattern perception (r(187) = .21, p< .001), indi-
cating that illusory pattern perception did not simply relate
to a tendency to find profoundness in all things unselec-
tively. Rather, illusory pattern perception was associated
with participants’ ability to distinguish between meaningful
motivational quotations and pseudo-profound bullshit state-
ments. Furthermore, replicating the results of past research
(Pennycook et al., 2015a; Pennycook & Rand, 2018), par-
ticipant’s CRT scores correlated negatively with BSR scores
(r(197) = −.37, p< .001). Notably, a partial correlation
showed that the relation between illusory pattern perception
and bullshit receptivity was largely unaffected after includ-
ing participant’s CRT performance as a covariate (r(190) =
.30, p= .004, vs. r= .35 without the covariate), indicating
that individual differences in CRT performance did not ac-
count for the association between illusory pattern perception
and bullshit receptivity. This was also true of the relation
between bullshit sensitivity and illusory pattern perception
(r(186) = .17, p= .020, vs. r= .21 without the covariate),
when including CRT performance as a covariate.
3 Study 2
The results of Experiment 1 support our hypothesis that illu-
sory pattern perception is positively associated with bullshit
receptivity. The primary goal of Experiment 2 was to build
on this finding by discriminating between two accounts for
this association. First, a positive association between illusory
pattern perception and bullshit receptivity may be a result of
a general tendency towards perceiving patterns, whether real
or illusory, being predictive of greater bullshit receptivity. In
contrast, it may be exclusively a tendency towards illusory
pattern perception that predicts greater bullshit receptivity.
Previous research investigating the relation between non-
illusory pattern perception and conspiracy and supernatu-
ral beliefs demonstrated that non-illusory pattern perception
was uncorrelated with conspiracy beliefs and negatively cor-
related with supernatural beliefs (Van Prooijen, et al., 2018).
In order to discriminate between these two accounts, Ex-

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 114
Table 2: Experiment 2 Correlations. (Cronbach’s alphas in parentheses.)
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Chaotic Art Pattern Perception 2.74 1.27 (.90)
2. Structured Art Pattern Perception 6.09 0.85 − (.89)
3. BSR 2.33 0.90 .30∗∗ −.23∗(.91)
4. Motivational quotations 3.22 0.78 .14 .02 .43∗∗∗ (.84)
5. CRT 1.59 1.33 −.08 .16 −.26∗∗∗ −.17∗(.62)
6. BS Sensitivity (Var3−Var4) −0.89 0.90 .17 −.24∗
.62∗∗∗ −.44∗∗∗ −.11 −
Note. Pearson correlations (Experiment 2; N= 200). BSR = Bullshit Receptivity scale; CRT = Cognitive Reflection
Test. BS Sensitivity = Participants’ mean BSR profundity ratings minus their mean motivational quotation profundity
ratings. ∗∗∗ p< .001, ∗∗ p< .01, ∗p< .05.
periment 2 had participants randomly assigned to evaluate
paintings in which the appearance of a meaningful pattern
was either present (structured paintings) or absent (chaotic
paintings). On the basis of past findings, we hypothesized
that perceiving patterns in chaotic, but not structured paint-
ings, would be positively associated with bullshit receptivity.
3.1 Method
3.1.1 Participants
A sample of 220 participants were recruited from Amazon
Mechanical Turk and received $2.00 upon completion of a
15-minute online questionnaire. Those who participated in
Experiment 1 were not recruited for Experiment 2.
3.1.2 Measures and Procedure
In order to assess pattern perception in Experiment 2, we
employed items used by Van Prooijen and colleagues (2018)
which had participants rate the extent to which they saw a pat-
tern in various modern art paintings. Participants randomly
assigned to the chaotic art condition were asked to evaluate
nine paintings by US artist Jackson Pollock whereas those
assigned to the structured art condition evaluated nine paint-
ings by Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely (see supplementary
materials; examples are also shown under the title). Al-
though participants were not informed of the artist’s name in
either condition, they were informed that the paintings they
would be evaluating all came from the same artist. Further-
more, in the chaotic art condition, participants were informed
that they would be presented with paintings from an artist
“well known for his random brush strokes and irregular fig-
ures.” Similarly, in the structured art condition, participants
were informed that the artist whose paintings they would
be evaluating was “well-known for his regular design and
alignment of figures.” Each painting was presented along
with three questions regarding beauty, familiarity, and pat-
tern perception. Most notably, pattern perception was as-
sessed by asking participants “To what extent do you see a
pattern in this painting?” for which they responded using a
7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much).
Following this initial portion of the experiment participants
rated the profundity of 20 statements and completed the four
CRT items used in Experiment 1.
3.2 Results and discussion
3.2.1 Participants
In Experiment 2 we removed all participants whose re-
sponses contained missing data. This intention was reg-
istered prior to data collection and analysis. Following this
rule, we removed 20 participants thus leaving us with our
target sample size of 200 participants.
3.2.2 Main findings
The results of Experiment 2 are shown in Table 2. As ex-
pected, perceiving patterns in chaotic art was positively as-
sociated with bullshit receptivity (r(95) = .30, p= .003).
No such association was found between chaotic art pat-
tern perception and profundity ratings for motivational quo-
tations (r(95) = .14, p= .182), suggesting a dissociation
between how individual differences in illusory pattern per-
ception relate to profundity judgments given to meaning-
ful and pseudo-profound statements. However, no signifi-
cant relation was observed between bullshit sensitivity and
the perception of patterns in chaotic art (r(95) = .17, p=
.089), indicating that the tendency to perceive patterns in
chaotic art may not relate to peoples’ ability to distinguish
between meaningful and pseudo-profound statements. Nev-
ertheless, it should be noted that the direction and magnitude
of these two non-significant correlations were almost identi-
cal to those observed in Experiment 1 with a distinct pattern
perception measure. Thus, it is entirely plausible that the
aforementioned correlations represent real, albeit weak, as-

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 115
sociations that the present analyses did not have the power
to detect.
Additionally, we expected that, unlike chaotic art pattern
perception, perceiving patterns in structured art would not
be positively associated with bullshit receptivity. In support
of this hypothesis, a negative association between structured
art pattern perception and bullshit receptivity was observed
(r(101) = −.23, p= .021). A similar negative association
was also observed between structured art pattern perception
and bullshit sensitivity (r(101) = −.24, p= .017). In further
support of the dissociation between illusory and non-illusory
pattern perception, a difference test on the correlations be-
tween bullshit sensitivity and chaotic art pattern perception
and bullshit sensitivity and structured art pattern perception
revealed that these correlations significantly differed (z=
2.89, p= .004). Relatedly, there was no relation observed
between structured art pattern perception and profundity rat-
ings for motivational quotations (r(101) = .02, p= .812).
Finally, we observed a significant negative correlation be-
tween CRT performance and bullshit receptivity, (r(198) =
−.26, p< .001) but not bullshit sensitivity (r(198) = −.11,
p= .134). Notably, partial correlations between chaotic and
structured pattern perception and bullshit receptivity were
unaffected by the addition of CRT performance as a covari-
ate, (r(94) = .29, p= .005, vs. r= .30 without the covariate,
and r(100) = −.20, p= .049, vs. r=−.23 without the covari-
ate, respectively). The relation between structured art pattern
perception and bullshit sensitivity was also unaffected by the
inclusion of CRT performance as a covariate (r(100) = −.22,
p= .030, vs. r=−.24 without the covariate).
4 Study 3
The results of Experiment 2 were consistent with our hypoth-
esis that only illusory pattern perception would be positively
associated with bullshit receptivity. Nevertheless, one could
argue that chaotic art stimuli did in fact have meaningful
patterns present and therefore that our measure of illusory
pattern perception was flawed. The primary goal of Experi-
ment 3 was to address this potential criticism by employing
two new measures of pattern perception where the presence
or absence of a pattern within stimuli was more objective
and concrete. For both measures of pattern perception, we
predicted that illusory pattern perception would be positively
correlated with bullshit receptivity and that this positive cor-
relation would disappear when examining non-illusory pat-
tern perception.
4.1 Method
4.1.1 Participants
A sample of 206 participants was recruited from Amazon
Mechanical Turk and received $2.75 upon completion of a
20-minute online questionnaire. Those who participated in
Experiments 1 or 2 were not recruited for Experiment 3.
4.1.2 Measures and procedure
Two new measures of pattern perception were employed in
Experiment 3 (order counterbalanced). The first was a modi-
fied version of the snowy pictures task (Whitson & Galinsky,
2008). This task consisted of the presentation of 24 pictures,
12 of which contained an embedded object which was diffi-
cult to perceive and 12 of which contained only visual noise.
For each image, participants were asked whether the image
contained an object and responded with either a “yes” or
“no” response.
Additionally, participants’ real and illusory pattern per-
ception was also measured using a co-variation task, similar
to that used by White (2003). For each item on this task,
participants were presented with a single table which con-
tained information regarding twenty fictional patients. For
each patient, participants were informed whether the patient
ate a meal containing a specific food additive (i.e., Additive
A, B, C, or D) and whether or not the patient suffered from
a specified disease (i.e., Disease Y). Below the presentation
of each table was an item asking participants to what extent
they felt that the specified food additive caused an increase,
decrease, or had no effect on the occurrence of Disease Y.
Participants responded on a −100 (causes great decrease) to
100 (causes great increase) scale using a slider which was
anchored at 0 (no effect). This task consisted of four items,
one for each food additive, which were presented on separate
pages in a randomized order. The true association between
the various food additives and Disease Y was such that two
food additives shared no association with Disease Y, one food
additive shared a positive association with Disease Y (∆P=
0.5), and one food additive shared a negative association
with Disease Y (∆P=−0.5). As in Experiment 2, following
the completion of both pattern perception measures, partic-
ipants rated the profundity of 20 statements and responded
to four CRT items. All instructions, stimuli, and items pre-
sented to participants in Experiment 3 can be viewed in the
supplementary materials.
4.2 Results and Discussion
4.2.1 Participants
In Experiment 3 we once again removed all participants who
had missing data. This intention was registered prior to data
collection and analysis. Following this rule, we removed six
participants, leaving us with our target sample size of 200
participants.

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 116
Table 3: Experiment 3 Correlations. (Cronbach’s alphas in parentheses).
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1. SPT (Object Absent) 2.32 2.95 (.87)
2. SPT (Object Present) 9.25 2.28 .46∗∗∗ (.70)
3. Error (No Association) 30.93 33.02 .26∗∗∗ −.02 .
4. Error (Association) 69.24 36.54 .28∗∗∗
.12 .43∗∗∗
.
5. BSR 2.41 0.92 .26∗∗∗
.02 .42∗∗∗
.27∗∗∗ (.91)
6. Motivational quotations 3.17 0.80 .15∗
.07 .25∗∗∗
.18∗
.59∗∗∗ (.85)
7. CRT 1.58 1.31 −.17∗−.02 −.27∗∗∗ −.14 −.37∗∗∗ −.22∗∗ (.59)
8. BS Sensitivity (Var5−Var6) −0.76 0.79 .15∗−.04 .23∗∗
.13 .57∗∗∗ −.33∗∗∗ −.21∗∗
.
Note. Pearson correlations (Experiment 3; N= 200). SPT (Object Absent) = Responses endorsing the presence of
an object in Modified Snowy Picture Task items which did not contain an object; SPT (Object Present) = Responses
endorsing the presence of an object in Modified Snowy Picture Task items which contained an object; Error (No-
Association) = Error scores for Covariation items with no association between factors; Error (Association) = Error
scores for Covariation items with an association between factors; BSR = Bullshit Receptivity scale; CRT = Cognitive
Reflection Test; BS Sensitivity = Participants’ mean BSR profundity ratings minus their mean motivational quotation
profundity ratings. ∗∗∗ p< .001, ∗∗ p< .01, ∗p< .05.
4.2.2 Main findings
The results of Experiment 3 are shown in Table 3. First, as
expected, perceiving objects in visual noise during the mod-
ified snowy pictures task was positively related with bullshit
receptivity, (r(198) = .26, p< .001). This association was
largely unaffected after adding participants’ performance on
the CRT as a covariate (r(197) = .21, p= .003). Furthermore,
correctly perceiving objects in object present items was not
related to bullshit receptivity (r(198) = .02, p= .790), once
again demonstrating a distinction between real and illusory
pattern perception as they relate to bullshit receptivity. Simi-
larly, participants’ pattern perception judgments were associ-
ated with their degree of bullshit sensitivity for object-absent
trials, (r(198) = .15 , p= .034), but not object-present trials
(r(198) = −.04 , p= .537).
Next, for the covariation task, an error score was calcu-
lated for each participant for each item type (i.e., association-
present and association-absent items). This score was the
summation of the differences (transformed to absolute val-
ues) between an item’s true association and participants’ re-
sponses. Therefore, higher error scores represented greater
illusory pattern perception for association-absent items and a
failure to correctly perceive true associations for association-
present items. In line with our preregistration, we removed
all error score data that diverged from the mean by more
than three standard deviations, resulting in the removal of
four participants. Consistent with expectations, error scores
for association-absent items were positively correlated with
bullshit receptivity, r(194) = .42, p< .001 and bullshit sen-
sitivity r(194) = .23, p= .001. That is, the more participants
endorsed an association between two factors when no asso-
ciation was present the more likely they were to rate BSR
statements as profound and the less likely they were to distin-
guish between meaningfully profound and pseudo-profound
statements. These relations were largely unaffected by the
addition of CRT performance as a covariate (r(193) = .36, p
< .001, and r(193) = .19, p= .009, respectively). Consistent
with the results of Experiment 2, we found that error scores
for association-present items were also positively correlated
with bullshit receptivity (r(194) = .27, p< .001). This was
not true of bullshit sensitivity, which failed to show a statis-
tically significant relation with error scores for association-
present items (r(194) =.13, p= .070). Additionally, the
relation between error scores for association-present items
and bullshit receptivity was shown to be largely unaffected
by the inclusion of CRT performance as a covariate in a par-
tial correlation (r(193) = .23, p= .001, vs. r= .27 without the
covariate). Overall, the aforementioned findings support the
claim that both perceiving illusory patterns and failing to cor-
rectly perceive patterns when they are present is predictive
of greater receptivity to bullshit.
5 General discussion
Across three experiments and four distinct measures of pat-
tern perception, our findings provide support for our hypoth-
esis that individuals susceptible to endorsing illusory pat-
terns would be more receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit.
Notably, this association was observed for both conceptual
and perceptual pattern perception tasks, suggesting that pat-
tern perception may be a useful construct for connecting
across conceptual and perceptual illusions. Additionally,

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 117
this finding was not merely a consequence of illusory pat-
tern perception being related to a general tendency to rate
statements as profound as bullshit sensitivity was found to
generally be positively associated with illusory pattern per-
ception. That is, participants who endorsed more illusory
patterns tended to judge pseudo-profound bullshit statements
as equally (or more) profound than meaningful motivational
quotations. Although it should be noted that individual dif-
ferences in illusory pattern perception may also help explain
why some individuals seemingly afford some level of pro-
fundity to any and all statements (including those that are
pseudo-profound). This is evidenced by our finding that pro-
fundity ratings for even “truly profound” motivational quotes
also share a positive relation with illusory pattern perception
(albeit weaker than pseudo-profound bullshit). Therefore,
illusory pattern perception may not represent a mechanism
entirely distinct from one put forth by Pennycook and col-
leagues (2015a) suggesting that a gullible tendency towards
ascribing profoundness to even the most mundane of state-
ments is one component of bullshit receptivity.
Previous research has found that individuals less likely to
engage in analytic thinking are more receptive to pseudo-
profound bullshit (Pennycook et al., 2015a; Pennycook &
Rand, 2018). We replicate these findings in the current study
consistently observing a negative relation between bullshit
receptivity and CRT performance. One possibility is that
the relation between bullshit receptivity and illusory pat-
tern perception arises simply as a result of intuitive thinkers
being more prone to both bullshit receptivity and illusory
pattern perception. However, the relation between bullshit
receptivity and illusory pattern perception was largely unaf-
fected by the inclusion of CRT performance as a covariate,
suggesting that illusory pattern perception may represent a
distinct mechanism for explaining individual differences in
bullshit receptivity. Nevertheless, the results of the current
study do suggest a modest negative relation between CRT
performance and illusory pattern perception, such that in-
dividuals with a greater tendency to engage in analytical
thinking appear less likely to endorse illusory patterns. This
finding suggests that the tendency to engage analytic think-
ing as well as the tendency to perceive illusory patterns may
interact in predicting who adopts irrational beliefs. That is,
being less likely to engage analytic thinking may make in-
dividuals more likely to perceive patterns in random noise
while simultaneously leaving them less able to correct for
this intuitive perception. This speculation could have in-
teresting implications for research on irrational beliefs that
future studies should explore.
Lastly, the results of Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate
that increases in non-illusory pattern perception are not pre-
dictive of increases in bullshit receptivity. In fact, results
obtained from two of our three measures of non-illusory
pattern perception suggest that participants who perceived
more non-illusory patterns were less receptive to bullshit.
Therefore, bullshit receptivity does not appear to be posi-
tively associated with a proclivity for endorsing patterns in
general. Rather, it is specifically a proclivity for endorsing il-
lusory patterns that was shown to share a positive association
with bullshit receptivity.
Accounts of various irrational beliefs, including conspir-
acy, supernatural, and superstitious beliefs, have explained
these beliefs in part as arising due to peoples’ natural ten-
dency to uncritically perceive patterns (Kay, Moscovitch &
Laurin, 2010; Shermer, 2011; Van Prooijen et al., 2018;
Whitson & Galinsky, 2008; Zhao, Hahn & Osherson, 2014).
Congruent with these accounts are findings showing that a
tendency to endorse illusory patterns is positively associ-
ated with various irrational beliefs (Blackmore & Moore,
1994; Van Prooijen et al., 2018; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008;
Wiseman & Watt, 2006; although see Blackmore, 1997 and
Bressan, 2002). In the current article, we propose a similar
account in attempt to elucidate why people are frequently
receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit. Specifically, we pro-
pose that bullshit receptivity arises in part as an unfortunate
side-effect of an otherwise adaptive pattern perception pro-
cess. Such a perspective is important as, compared to initial
accounts of bullshit receptivity which focus on receptivity
to bullshit as arising from errors in reasoning (e.g., failing
to engage in reflective thinking when encountering bullshit),
this account emphasizes distinct ways to potentially reduce
peoples’ susceptibility to bullshit. For example, it has been
documented that aversive feelings, such as feelings related to
a lack of control, increase peoples’ endorsement of illusory
patterns. Thus, to the extent that greater illusory pattern
perception leads to the creation of meaning where no mean-
ing exists, manipulations that allow people to regain a sense
of control should also reduce their susceptibility to bullshit.
Congruent with this claim, enhancing people’s sense of con-
trol has been demonstrated to lower conspiracy beliefs (Van
Prooijen & Acker, 2015; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008).
Finally, related to the concepts examined here (i.e., pat-
tern perception, engagement of analytic thinking, and bull-
shit receptivity) is the construct of liberal acceptance. Lib-
eral acceptance, or the tendency to collect little evidence
and have lower decision-thresholds for making strong judg-
ments, has been discussed as a risk factor for the emergence
of various delusions and irrational beliefs, specifically for
those suffering from psychosis (Moritz, Woodward, Jelinek
& Klinge, 2008). For example, Moritz and colleagues, ex-
amining a liberal acceptance account of psychosis, found
that patients suffering from schizophrenia were more likely
to strongly endorse a false memory on a recognition mem-
ory test compared to healthy controls, specifically for weakly
or moderately related distractors (as opposed to strongly re-
lated distractors for which no differences between patients
and controls were observed). One might expect that liberal
acceptance would be associated with greater illusory pattern
perception, lower levels of analytic thinking, and a tendency

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2, March 2019 Illusory pattern perception and bullshit detection 118
to endorse pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound.
The relation between illusory pattern perception and bullshit
receptivity (perhaps compounded by low levels of analytic
thinking) could be explained by this concept of liberal ac-
ceptance. That is, a person with low decision-thresholds for
judging the relevance of infrequent or unrelated events may
also be more likely to endorse illusory patterns as well as
find meaning in meaningless pseudo-profound statements.
5.1 Future directions and limitations
One limitation of the current study was that, across all three
experiments, our pattern perception tasks preceded our pro-
fundity judgment task, resulting in potential order effects.
However, while one can imagine how profundity judgments
may be influenced by first having participants complete a
pattern perception task, it is not clear how the predictive
validity of our individual difference measures would be af-
fected. Furthermore, a clear limitation of the current study is
its strictly correlational nature which prevents support of any
causal claims. Thus, while increases in illusory pattern per-
ception may lead to greater bullshit receptivity, it is also pos-
sible that the endorsement of pseudo-profound bullshit leads
to greater illusory pattern perception or that both of these
variables are associated with some unmeasured third vari-
able (e.g., liberal acceptance). Nevertheless, we believe that
the more parsimonious model is one suggesting a low-level
perceptual process contributing to a higher level conceptual
process as opposed to a model suggesting the reverse (i.e.,
bullshit receptivity influencing pattern perception). This
may give some weight to our suggested account however,
ideally, a future study would address this limitation by di-
rectly manipulating illusory pattern perception in order to
investigate the potential causal link between illusory pattern
perception and bullshit receptivity. However, successfully
manipulating individuals’ propensities towards illusory pat-
tern perception in a way that remains influential during indi-
viduals’ subsequent profundity ratings of pseudo-profound
bullshit statements may prove difficult. One potential way
to accomplish this goal is through a loss of control manip-
ulation, such that aversive feelings of lacking control have
been shown to lead to increases in illusory pattern percep-
tion and conspiratorial and superstitious beliefs (Whitson &
Galinsky, 2008). Therefore, future research could investigate
whether those randomly assigned a task that induces a lack
of control more readily endorse pseudo-profound bullshit as
profound.
5.2 Conclusion
Like other irrational beliefs, bullshit is a real, prevalent, and
consequential phenomenon. Due to this prevalence and po-
tential for harm, the ability to recognize and avoid bullshit
is an essential skill to have in today’s world. Unfortunately,
initial investigations of peoples’ susceptibilities to pseudo-
profound bullshit paint a grim picture, with people frequently
endorsing profundity in meaningless pseudo-profound state-
ments (Pennycook et al., 2015a; Pennycook & Rand, 2018;
Pfattheicher & Schindler, 2016; Sterling et al., 2016). In
the current study we propose that, like many other irrational
beliefs, people’s susceptibilities to bullshit results from an
overall adaptive tendency to perceive patterns in the world.
We demonstrate that individuals with a proclivity towards
endorsing illusory patterns are more likely to rate meaning-
less pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound. In
conclusion, the tendency to go beyond the available data and
infuse the world with illusory patterns is positively asso-
ciated with the tendency to create and endorse meaning in
superficially impressive, yet ultimately meaningless, pseudo-
profound statements.
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