Bullshit makes the art grow profounder

Abstract

Across four studies participants ( N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo ), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8 ), and no titles. Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-generated abstract art, compared to when no titles were present (Study 1). Mundane titles did not enhance the perception of profoundness, indicating that pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically (as opposed to titles in general) enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract art (Study 2). Furthermore, these effects generalize to artist-created abstract art (Study 3). Finally, we report a large correlation between profoundness ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and “International Art English” statements (Study 4), a mode and style of communication commonly employed by artists to discuss their work. This correlation suggests that these two independently developed communicative modes share underlying cognitive mechanisms in their interpretations. We discuss the potential for these results to be integrated into a larger, new theoretical framework of bullshit as a low-cost strategy for gaining advantages in prestige awarding domains.

Full text

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019, pp. 658–670
Bullshit makes the art grow profounder
Martin Harry Turpin∗Alexander C. Walker†Mane Kara-Yakoubian†Nina N. Gabert†
Jonathan A. Fugelsang†Jennifer A. Stolz†
Abstract
Across four studies participants (N= 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories
of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8), and no titles.
Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-generated abstract art,
compared to when no titles were present (Study 1). Mundane titles did not enhance the perception of profoundness, indicating
that pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically (as opposed to titles in general) enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract
art (Study 2). Furthermore, these effects generalize to artist-created abstract art (Study 3). Finally, we report a large correlation
between profoundness ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and “International Art English” statements (Study 4), a mode
and style of communication commonly employed by artists to discuss their work. This correlation suggests that these two
independently developed communicative modes share underlying cognitive mechanisms in their interpretations. We discuss
the potential for these results to be integrated into a larger, new theoretical framework of bullshit as a low-cost strategy for
gaining advantages in prestige awarding domains.
Keywords: pseudo-profound bullshit, impression management, abstract art, meaning, social navigation
1 Introduction
An experience that may be familiar to visitors of modern
art museums is finding oneself before a sprawling arrange-
ment of colour and shape seemingly randomly splattered on
a canvas. One may look at such paintings for several mo-
ments, puzzled as to what meaning is purportedly captured
in the colourful streaks. Eventually, feeling the anxiety of
unknowing building inside of oneself, one’s eyes are almost
instinctively drawn to the description card that is the per-
manent companion of many modern art paintings. Finally,
as if searching for something tangible and specific to tackle
cognitively, the description is read, and the museum goer is
satisfied, perhaps even exasperatedly telling themselves “Ah
I could see how that would be. . . .”
Previous research on aesthetic preferences demonstrates
that people have a general dislike of art that they consider
meaningless (Dissanayake, 1988; Donald, 1991; Humphrey,
1999; Lewis-Williams, 2002; Ramachandran & Hirstein,
1999). Those high in a personal need for structure especially
dislike seemingly meaningless modern art (Landau, Green-
berg, Solomon, Pyszczynski & Martens, 2006). In contrast,
openness to experience and a preference for non-conformity
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. Email: mh-
turpin@uwaterloo.ca.
†Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.
has been shown to be positively associated with a liking of
modern art (Feist & Brady, 2004). Despite these individual
differences, in general, people find a lack of meaning aver-
sive. For example, when faced with meaninglessness or un-
certainty, people go so far as endorsing illusory patterns and
forming irrational beliefs in order to avoid this uncomfort-
able experience (Van Harreveld, Rutjens, Schneider, Nohlen
& Keskinis, 2014; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). Relatedly,
external stimuli that help people make sense of art (e.g.,
titles) have been found to not only increase peoples’ percep-
tion of meaning for abstract modern art (Russell & Milne,
1997), but also their liking of difficult-to-interpret abstract
art images (Landau et al., 2006). Overall, it seems that the
way people experience abstract art is inseparably tied to the
ways in which they deal with meaning, lack of meaning, and
their relative comfort with perceived meaninglessness.
1.1 Pseudo-Profound Bullshit
Related to peoples’ perception of meaning is a growing body
of research demonstrating peoples’ frequent endorsements
of meaningless computer-generated statements as profound
(Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler & Fugelsang, 2015).
These statements (referred to as pseudo-profound bullshit)
while superficially impressive, are generated by a computer
program randomly arranging a set of profound-sounding
words in a way that retains proper syntactic structure; as
such they lack any intent to communicate something true
or meaningful (see Dalton, 2016, for a comment, and Pen-
nycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler & Fugelsang, 2016, for a
658
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 659
response). Research examining peoples’ susceptibilities to
pseudo-profound bullshit have utilized Frankfurt’s (2005)
conception of bullshit as an absence of concern for truth or
meaning. Thus, pseudo-profound bullshit is characterized
not for its falsity but its fakery; bullshit may be true, false, or
meaningless, what makes a claim bullshit is an implied yet
artificial attention to truth and meaning.
While previous work has mostly focused on the character-
istics of individuals who are susceptible to endorsing pro-
fundity in meaningless pseudo-profound statements (Penny-
cook et al., 2015; Pennycook & Rand, 2019; Walker, Turpin,
Stolz, Fugelsang & Koehler, 2019), of potentially greater
consequence is how people deploy bullshit to gain social
advantages. That is, research dealing with the idiosyncratic
tendency to find meaning in randomly generated stimuli,
while interesting, largely overlooks the real-world domains
in which peoples’ susceptibilities to pseudo-profound bull-
shit may be exploited to gain prestige, status, and material
goods. An aim of the current work is to propose a new
theoretical framework which views bullshitting as a low-cost
strategy for gaining an advantage in prestige-awarding do-
mains.
1.2 Bullshit as a Low-Cost Strategy
For many domains in which humans compete for prestige,
status, or material goods, the criteria for determining who
succeeds and fails at least partially rely on impressing oth-
ers. In these domains, bullshit may be deployed as a low-
cost strategy for gaining prestige. An agent working towards
being successful in a domain, can engage in the long and ar-
duous process of acquiring expert skills and knowledge that
they could then leverage to accomplish certain goals. Al-
ternatively, an agent could engage in a less effortful process
that produces similar benefits (i.e., impressing others with
bullshit). These two strategies need not be mutually exclu-
sive. A person with impressive skills and competence could
potentially use bullshit to enhance their outcomes, and as
such, yield more success compared to equally skilled peers
who are either unwilling or unable to bullshit well.
The extent to which bullshit can be deployed as an effective
low-cost strategy for success may greatly vary by domain.
First, bullshit is less likely to be effective in domains in which
success is objectively judged, and thus, impressing others is
not required. For example, in athletic competitions focused
on speed (e.g., 100m race), endurance (e.g., a marathon),
or strength (e.g., powerlifting), the ability to impress oth-
ers with bullshit should be a) difficult and b) of little value,
as one’s degree of competence in these competitions can
be easily and objectively measured. Nevertheless, in many
domains, success can be obtained, or at least enhanced, by
impressing others. For example, in artistic endeavors such
as music, poetry, or art, technical skills are unlikely to be
the sole determiner of success. What is likely to be equally
important is the ability to impress others by making one’s
artwork appear unique, profound, and meaningful (Miller,
2001). A quick and efficient way to impress others in this
manner is with claims that imply, yet do not contain, any
specifically interpretable truth or meaning (i.e., with bull-
shit). Of course, “bullshit” in this context need not carry any
negative connotation. If the goal of a piece of art is to inspire
the feeling of profoundness in its viewers, whether this feel-
ing originates from the art itself or is created by the viewer
is of no consequence. Such situations may be contrasted
with circumstances in which truth, rather than pleasure or
profoundness, is a primary goal (e.g., science or medicine),
where the use of bullshit to gain advantages is antithetical to
the primary purpose of the discipline.
1.3 “Bullshit” in Science
While we may wish to believe that bullshit is ineffective in
more objectively judged domains (e.g., science), where truth
is of primary importance, a growing body of research hints
that even here bullshitting may offer a competitive advan-
tage. For example, Eriksson (2012) demonstrated that the
inclusion of irrelevant (and nonsensical in context) math for-
mulae in the abstracts of scientific papers caused graduate-
degree holders in education, the humanities, and other non-
mathematics fields to rate these scientific papers as higher in
quality. Similarly, Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, and
Gray (2008) found that including irrelevant neuroscience
explanations for psychological phenomena caused readers
to judge these explanations as more satisfying compared
to when the same explanation was given without irrelevant
neuroscience information. Notably, this difference was es-
pecially pronounced when an initial explanation was of poor
quality. In both instances, these empirical findings highlight
how the inclusion of seemingly impressive language that was
irrelevant to the truth-value of a scientific claim improved
readers’ reception of the work. While it can be debated
whether these two instances qualify as “bullshit” technically,
these cases do highlight how the goal of scientific commu-
nication can become less about strictly communicating true
knowledge about the universe and more about impressing an
audience.
The extent to which a domain attends to and effectively
polices the fakery characteristic of bullshit is likely to deter-
mine how successfully bullshit can be utilized as a low-cost
strategy for achieving success. Consistent with this notion,
research on the antecedents of bullshitting has demonstrated
that people bullshit more (i.e., make claims less concerned
with the truth) when they believe they are communicating
with an unknowledgeable person, a like-minded individual,
or believe they will not have to justify their claims (Petro-
celli, 2018). Thus, people appear to bullshit more when they
feel it will either go unnoticed or be tolerated. In such cases,
bullshit may not only be prevalent, but effective.
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 660
Figure 1: Example of computer-generated and artist-created abstract art presented to participants in the current study. All
abstract art was presented with either a pseudo-profound bullshit, mundane, or no title.
1.4 Bullshit Makes the Art Grow Profounder
Some abstract artists have embraced a radically subjective
view toward art, that is to say there is no possible objective
standard for beauty or meaning. These artists maintain a
goal to impress a sense of depth or beauty, while going fur-
ther than merely not being concerned about truth, but instead
denying that any objective truth could possibly exist (for dis-
cussion of these views of art see: Crowley, 1958; Young,
1997; similar views have been expressed regarding pseudo-
profound bullshit: Dalton, 2016). With the popular view
that all experiences of meaning in art are self-generated, and
all experiences are equally valid, the domain of abstract art
may perfectly exemplify an environment for which bullshit
is likely to be rampant and effective. That is, not only is it
possible that bullshit enhances the perceived quality of ab-
stract art, but the mutually agreed upon notion among some
abstract artists and enthusiasts that no objective truth exists,
may serve to disarm anyone who might otherwise be skep-
tical of the meaning attached to an art piece. In the current
study, we test whether the presence of a pseudo-profound
bullshit title, consisting of a random arrangement of words
commonly used to describe art, can influence peoples’ per-
ceptions of the profoundness of abstract art. We hypothesize
that abstract art accompanied by pseudo-profound bullshit ti-
tles (e.g., Evolving Model of Dreams) will be judged as more
profound compared to abstract art that is untitled (Study 1)
or is accompanied by a mundane title (e.g., Objects in Tint;
Studies 2 and 3; see Figure 1). The current study tests these
hypotheses using computer-generated (Studies 1 and 2) and
artist-created abstract art (Study 3).
If the world of abstract art does in fact represent an ideal
environment for bullshit to be deployed as an effective low-
cost strategy for gaining prestige, then one would expect the
presence of bullshit to be widespread in this domain. It is
a common casual observation that artists, and especially ab-
stract or modern artists, have their own specific and unique
way of communicating about art. This is reflected in the
choice of titles, descriptions, and modes of speaking that
collectively fall under the umbrella of “International Art En-
glish” (Rule & Levine 2012). Some of the key linguistic
features of International Art English, as described by Rule
and Levine, include the morphing of verbs and adjectives
into nouns (e.g., potential to potentiality), the pairing of like
terms (e.g., internal psychology and external reality), and
the favouring of hard-to-picture spatial metaphors (e.g., cul-
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 661
mination of many small acts achieves mythic proportions)
over clear and concise language. Now consider an example
of pseudo-profound bullshit: “the future will be an astral
unveiling of inseparability,” and compare it to the charac-
teristics of International Art English. There is a noticeable
similarity, such that they both include the morphing of ad-
jectives into nouns (i.e., inseparable to inseparability) and
capture the use of impossible-to-picture visual metaphors as
the main vehicle in impressing a sense of depth. In this way,
both modes manage to be stylistically impressive while not
communicating anything specific that could be challenged.
Linguistically, it seems that the English artists use to de-
scribe and discuss their practice is either the same, or is at
least tapping into the same cognitive mechanisms that give
pseudo-profound bullshit its effect. That is to say, that the
linguistic features that elevate the perceived profoundness
of pseudo-profound bullshit above a mundanely stated truth
are also present in International Art English, and this may
allow for the use of bullshit to transfer a “false” sense of
profoundness onto an abstract art piece.
It could be the case that artists have independently stum-
bled upon the competitively advantageous potential that good
bullshitting affords in a prestige-awarding domain. These
predictions are not intended to be taken as a value judg-
ment on the quality of modern art, nor a dismissal of the
subjectively derived meaning formed when exposed to such
pieces. If anything, the production of good and satisfying
“bullshit” (i.e., statements meant to be impressive regardless
of truth) may simply be part of the artistic process as much
as the production of a painting. The prediction that follows
from this is that there should be a strong association between
peoples’ receptiveness to pseudo-profound bullshit and their
endorsement of profoundness in International Art English
(Study 4).
2 Study 1
Study 1 explores whether computer-generated pseudo-
profound bullshit can be used to increase the profundity
of computer-generated abstract art. Specifically, we hypoth-
esize that abstract art accompanied by a pseudo-profound
bullshit title will be judged as more profound compared to
untitled abstract art images.
2.1 Method
2.1.1 Participants
A sample of 200 University of Waterloo undergraduates vol-
unteered to complete Study 1 in exchange for course credit.
2.1.2 Measures
A full list of items for all measures and materials used in the
current study can be found in our supplementary materials
(Part A).
Bullshit Receptivity Scale The Bullshit Receptivity (BSR)
scale, taken from Pennycook and colleagues (2015),
was administered in Study 1. This scale consists of
thirty pseudo-profound bullshit statements originally re-
trieved from two websites (http://wisdomofchopra.com and
http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/), both of which create mean-
ingless statements by randomly arranging a list of profound-
sounding words in a way that preserves syntactic structure
(e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”). These state-
ments, while perhaps superficially impressive, are not specif-
ically interpretable. That is, due to their method of genera-
tion, they do not have a specific intended meaning. Partici-
pants rated the profundity of each pseudo-profound bullshit
statement on a 5-point scale which ranged from 1 (Not at all
profound) to 5 (Very profound). A bullshit receptivity score
was calculated for each participant by averaging the profun-
dity ratings provided to each of the thirty pseudo-profound
bullshit statements.
Motivational Quotation Scale To contrast the meaning-
less pseudo-profound statements featured in the BSR, we
included ten motivational quotations, also originating from
Pennycook and colleagues (2015). These statements were
designed to capture a true attempt at communicating some-
thing meaningful and profound (e.g., “A wet man does not
fear the rain”). Participants rated the profundity of each
motivational statement using the same 5-point scale as the
BSR. Similarly, participants’ profundity ratings to all ten mo-
tivational quotations were averaged to create a motivational
quotation scale score for each participant.
Mundane Statements Ten mundane statements were in-
cluded in Study 1 (Pennycook et al., 2015). These state-
ments, while technically true and specifically interpretable,
did not contain truth of a grand or profound nature (e.g.,
“Newborn babies require constant attention”). Once again,
participants rated each of these ten mundane statements us-
ing the same 5-point scale as the BSR and motivational
quotations. A profundity score for mundane statements was
calculated for each participant by averaging the profundity
ratings provided to mundane statements.
Bullshit Sensitivity As done previously by Pennycook
and colleagues (2015), we calculate bullshit sensitivity as
a measure of a participant’s ability to distinguish pseudo-
profound bullshit statements from meaningfully profound
motivational quotations. Bullshit sensitivity was computed
by subtracting participants’ mean profundity ratings given
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 662
to pseudo-profound bullshit statements from their mean pro-
fundity ratings given to motivational quotations. Higher
scores indicate greater sensitivity in detecting bullshit.
2.1.3 Materials
Pseudo-Profound Bullshit Title Generation Approxi-
mating computer-generated pseudo-profound bullshit, we
gathered 150 randomly-generated titles using a web-
site (http://noemata.net/pa/titlegen/) which strings together
words commonly used in art titles and descriptions. As these
titles were generated via a computer program randomly ar-
ranging words commonly used to describe art, and therefore
lacked any intent to communicate something meaningful, we
categorized these randomly-generated titles as bullshit. We
removed eight pseudo-profound bullshit titles due to the fact
that they referenced specific features (e.g., “Crying Boy in
a Corner”). This left us with 142 randomly-generated titles
which were included in Study 1.
Abstract Art Image Generation Abstract art images
were generated by a research assistant blind to the stud-
ies’ purpose and hypotheses. Images were generated using
two websites (http://bomomo.com and http://windowseat.ca/
viscosity/create.php), which provided drawing tools that be-
have in a pseudo-random fashion, only affording the user
coarse-grained control over an image’s content (i.e., colour,
broad shapes, and pattern types). As such, these websites
allowed us to produce 200 pseudo-randomly generated ab-
stract art images which lacked any human-defined intention
to communicate meaning. In order to match the number of
pseudo-profound bullshit titles, we eliminated 58 abstract art
images by randomly sampling 142 out of our 200 images us-
ing the random sampling functions provided in the NumPy
library for Python (Walt, Colbert & Varoquaux, 2011).
2.1.4 Procedure
Study 1 utilized a within-subjects design in which partici-
pants were presented with 142 computer-generated abstract
art images in PsychoPy (Peirce, 2007) in a random order,
half of which were accompanied by a randomly-generated
pseudo-profound bullshit title and half of which were left
untitled. For each trial, there was a 50% chance of the
presented image being accompanied by a pseudo-profound
bullshit title. Following the presentation of each abstract
art image, participants were asked to rate the profundity of
the image using a 5-point scale which ranged from 1 (Not
at all profound) to 5 (Very profound). Consistent with past
work (Pennycook et al., 2015), participants were instructed
that the definition of profound was to be taken as “of deep
meaning; of great and broadly inclusive significance” prior
to the start of the study. Following the evaluation of all 142
art images, participants judged the profundity of each of the
142 pseudo-profound bullshit titles unaccompanied by an art
image. Next, participants were asked to rate the profundity
of fifty statements (i.e., BSR, motivational quotations, and
mundane statements) that were presented in a randomized
order. Lastly, to conclude the study, participants completed
the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), Actively Open-Minded
Thinking scale (AOT), and Wordsum task. These individual
difference measures were collected for exploratory reasons
and thus are reported in the supplementary materials (Part
C).
2.2 Results and Discussion
A paired samples t-test comparing participants’ profundity
ratings of abstract art when accompanied by a randomly gen-
erated pseudo-profound bullshit title versus no title revealed
a significant effect of title presence, t(199) = 10.16, p< .001,
d= 0.43. That is, as predicted, abstract art images presented
with pseudo-profound bullshit titles (M= 2.60, SD = 0.69)
were perceived as more profound compared to untitled ab-
stract art (M= 2.31, SD = 0.66), demonstrating the ability
of pseudo-profound bullshit to enhance the profundity of ab-
stract art.1To take into account item-level variance, a paired
samples t-test was also conducted comparing the same art-
works with and without a title (t(141) = 19.15, p< .001),
demonstrating that the effect was observed at the item as
well as the participant level.
Along with the observed profundity enhancing effect of
pseudo-profound bullshit titles, we conducted correlational
analyses to explore the relation between some of our key
variables (see Table 1). First, a strong positive correlation
was found between profundity ratings for pseudo-profound
bullshit statements (i.e., bullshit receptivity) and randomly-
generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles [r(198) = .73, p
< .001], suggesting that our randomly-generated titles were
a good approximation of pseudo-profound bullshit. Fur-
thermore, we observed strong positive correlations between
participants’ bullshit receptivity and their profoundness rat-
ings given to titled [r(198) = .58, p< .001] and untitled
[r(198) = .52, p< .001] abstract art. Similarly, we find
that participants’ bullshit sensitivity was negatively corre-
lated with their profoundness ratings given to titled [r(198)
=−.34, p< .001] and untitled [r(198) = −.34, p< .001]
abstract art, indicating that participants failing to distinguish
between pseudo-profound bullshit and motivational quota-
tions were more likely to judge computer-generated abstract
art as profound.
1We replicated the profundity enhancing effect of pseudo-profound bull-
shit titles on participants’ profundity judgments of computer-generated ab-
stract art in a separate study. The methods and results for this study are
reported in full in the supplementary materials (Part B).
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 663
Table 1: Study 1 Correlations.
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. BS Titled Art 2.60 0.69 .
2. Untitled Art 2.31 0.66 .83 .
3. BS Titles 2.80 0.60 .66 .61 .
4. BSR 2.98 0.73 .58 .52 .73 .
5. Motivational Quotations 3.71 0.74 .22 .16 .44 .44 .
6. Mundane statements 1.80 1.01 .10 .20 .19 .13 .10 .
7. BS Sensitivity (Var5–Var4) 0.73 0.78 −.34 −.34 −.28 −.53 .53 −.03
Note. Pearson correlations (Study 1; N= 200). “BS Titled Art” refers to participants’ profundity
ratings given to abstract art images accompanied by a pseudo-profound bullshit title. “Untitled Art”
refers to participants’ profundity ratings given to untitled abstract art images. “BS Titles” refers to
participants’ profoundness ratings of pseudo-profound bullshit titles unaccompanied by art. BSR
= Bullshit Receptivity scale; BS Sensitivity = Participants’ mean motivational quotation profundity
ratings minus their mean BSR profundity ratings. Coefficients of .14 or greater are significant at
the p< .05 level, coefficients of .19 or greater are significant at the p< .01, coefficients of .24 or
greater are significant at the p< .001 level.
3 Study 2
The results of Study 1 suggest that the addition of pseudo-
profound bullshit titles to abstract art images increases the
profundity of abstract art. Nevertheless, the possibility re-
mains that the profundity enhancing effect of our pseudo-
profound bullshit titles may have simply been a result of
participants using any cue to inform their ratings. For ex-
ample, it is plausible that giving abstract art any title at all
signals that it was produced effortfully, and thus may increase
its perceived profundity. If this is the case, then the observed
profundity enhancing effect of our pseudo-profound bullshit
titles would not be an effect of bullshit at all. To test this
possibility, Study 2 introduced mundane titles into the title
set. If simply providing any title to an abstract art image
enhances the perceived profundity of that image, we should
expect that both pseudo-profound bullshit and mundane ti-
tles will increase the profundity of abstract art. However,
if this effect is unique to bullshit, then we should expect
that only art paired with pseudo-profound bullshit will be
perceived as more profound compared to untitled art. We
therefore hypothesized that abstract art accompanied by a
pseudo-profound bullshit title would be judged as more pro-
found compared to art accompanied by a mundane title, or
no title.
3.1 Method
3.1.1 Participants
A sample of 218 University of Waterloo undergraduates vol-
unteered to complete a study in exchange for course credit.
3.1.2 Measures and Materials
All measures were identical to those used in Study 1 with the
exception that in Study 2 the AOT and CRT were no longer
administered. Similarly, all materials were identical to those
used in Study 1 with the exception of the introduction of
mundane titles.
Mundane Titles One-hundred fifty mundane titles were
generated by a research assistant blind to both the purpose
and hypotheses of Study 2. These titles were generated by
combining various descriptive words commonly used in art
contexts. All mundane titles were created such that they
pertained to the physical properties of art as opposed to the
meaning of an art piece (e.g., shape, colour, arrangement).
Using a random sampling procedure, we selected 71 mun-
dane titles to be used in this study. This ensured that half of
the titles used in Study 2 were mundane titles, with the other
half being pseudo-profound bullshit titles.
3.1.3 Procedure
Study 2 utilized the same general procedure as Study 1, with
the primary exception being the introduction of mundane
titles during participants’ profundity judgments of computer-
generated abstract art images. Specifically, participants were
presented with 142 images in a random order, with each
image having an equal likelihood of being accompanied by
a randomly-generated bullshit title, a mundane title, or no
title. Following participants’ profundity judgements of all
142 abstract art images, participants were asked to rate the
profundity of all 142 titles (71 pseudo-profound bullshit titles
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 664
Table 2: Study 2 Correlations.
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1. BS Titled Art 2.68 0.74 .
2. Mundane Titled Art 2.33 0.67 .74 .
3. Untitled Art 2.30 0.65 .68 .86 .
4. BS Titles 3.49 0.88 .65 .51 .47 .
5. Mundane Titles 1.77 0.64 .36 .59 .61 .37 .
6. BSR 3.16 0.82 .52 .45 .44 .67 .47 .
7. Motivational Quotations 3.64 0.77 .30 .23 .16 .40 .15 .41 .
8. Mundane Statements 1.83 0.99 .01 .19 .19 −.03 .49 .21 .21 .
9. BS Sensitivity (Var7–Var6) 0.48 0.87 −.23 −.22 −.28 −.27 −.31 −.59 .50 −.02
Note. Pearson correlations (Study 2; N= 218). “BS Titled Art” refers to participants’ profundity ratings given to
abstract art images accompanied by a pseudo-profound bullshit title. “Mundane Titled Art” refers to participants’
profundity ratings given to abstract art images accompanied by mundane titles. “Untitled Art” refers to participants’
profundity ratings given to untitled abstract art images. “BS Titles” refers to participants’ profoundness ratings of
pseudo-profound bullshit titles unaccompanied by art. “Mundane Titles” refers to participants’ profoundness ratings
of mundane titles unaccompanied by art. BSR = Bullshit Receptivity scale. BS Sensitivity = Participants’ mean
motivational quotation profundity ratings minus their mean BSR profundity ratings. Coefficients of .14 or greater
are significant at the p< .05 level, coefficients of .19 or greater are significant at the p< .01, coefficients of .24 or
greater are significant at the p< .001 level.
and 71 mundane titles). Other than these noted changes the
procedure of Study 2 followed that of Study 1.
3.2 Results and Discussion
A repeated measures ANOVA revealed a main effect of title
type (pseudo-profound bullshit title, mundane title, untitled)
on profundity ratings of abstract art images F(2, 434) =
81.63, p< .001, η2
p= .273. Follow-up paired samples t-
tests revealed significant differences between profoundness
ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit titled abstract art and
untitled [t(217) = 9.96, p< .001, d= 0.55] and mundane
titled [t(217) = 9.92, p< .001, d= 0.50] abstract art im-
ages. No difference was detected between profundity ratings
given to mundane titled and untitled art [t(217) = 1.24, p
= .22, d= 0.05]. Collectively, these results suggest that it
is pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically that enhance
the profundity of abstract art, as opposed to any and all ti-
tles. Specifically, the addition of mundane titles to abstract
art images did not enhance the profundity of these images
compared to untitled art. To take into account item-level
variance, paired samples t-tests were also conducted com-
paring the same artworks across title types. A significant
difference was detected between pseudo-profound bullshit
titled and untitled art: t(141) = 21.33, p< .001, pseudo-
profound bullshit titled and mundane titled art: t(141) =
19.41, p< .001, as well as between untitled and mundane
titled art: t(141) = 1.99, p= .049. Therefore, the effect of
title type on profundity ratings of art was observed at the
item as well as the participant level.
The results of correlational analyses examining the as-
sociations between various key variables can be viewed in
Table 2. Consistent with the results of Study 1, we observed
a strong positive association between participants’ bullshit
receptivity and their profundity judgments of abstract art
images across all title types [BS Title: r(216) = .52, p<
.001; Mundane Title: r(216) = .45, p< .001; No Title:
r(216) = .44, p< .001]. Similarly, we also find that par-
ticipants’ bullshit sensitivity was negatively correlated with
their profoundness judgments of abstract art images [BS Ti-
tle: r(216) = −.23, p= .001; Mundane Title: r(216) =
−.22, p= .001; No Title: r(216) = −.28, p< .001], once
again demonstrating that participants failing to distinguish
between pseudo-profound bullshit and motivational quota-
tions were more likely to judge abstract art as profound.
Taken together, these associations provide further evidence
that those finding meaning in pseudo-profound bullshit state-
ments are more likely to perceive profoundness in abstract
art.
4 Study 3
While the results of our previous studies suggest that pseudo-
profound bullshit can enhance the perception of profound-
ness in abstract art, a limitation of these studies is that all
abstract art images were computer-generated. Therefore,
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 665
one may wonder whether pairing pseudo-profound bullshit
titles with artist-created art, which may be of higher quality
compared to our computer-generated images, would have the
same profundity enhancing effect. In Study 3 we assess this
possibility by including artist-created abstract art images.
We hypothesize that for both artist-created and computer-
generated abstract art, participants would judge art accom-
panied by a pseudo-profound bullshit title as more profound
compared to art accompanied by a mundane title, or no ti-
tle. Crucially, we predict no interaction. That is, we expect
the effect of pseudo-profound bullshit titles to be the same
among both artist-created and computer-generated art.
4.1 Method
4.1.1 Participants
A sample of 200 University of Waterloo undergraduates vol-
unteered to complete a study in exchange for course credit.
4.1.2 Measures and Materials
The measures administered in Study 3 were identical to those
administered in Study 2. Similarly, all materials used in
Study 3 were identical to those used in Study 2, with the
only difference being the addition of artist-created abstract
art.
Artist-Created Abstract Art In order to investigate the
influence of randomly-generated bullshit titles on real artist-
created art, we gathered 80 artist-created abstract art images
from the Museum of Modern Art’s website (https://www.
moma.org). All 80 images were collected by a research
assistant blind to both the purpose and hypotheses of Study
3. We eliminated nine of these abstract art images from
Study 3 due to their likeness to concrete forms (e.g., humans,
animals, and household objects). This left us with 71 artist-
created abstract art images which were included in Study
3.
4.1.3 Procedure
As in Studies 1 and 2, participants were presented with 142
abstract art images and asked to judge the profundity of
each image. In Study 3, the set of 142 abstract art images
consisted of 71 computer-generated images (randomly se-
lected from our set of 142 computer-generated images used
in Studies 1 and 2) and 71 real-world artist-created images.
Each image had an equal chance of being accompanied by
a pseudo-profound bullshit title, a mundane title, or no ti-
tle. The remaining procedure was identical to that of Study
2, with participants judging the profundity of all 142 titles
unaccompanied by an abstract art image. Additionally, par-
ticipants provided profundity ratings for 50 statements con-
sisting of pseudo-profound bullshit statements, motivational
quotations, and mundane statements (mixed in a random
order), and completed the Wordsum verbal ability task.
4.2 Results and Discussion
A 3 (title type: pseudo-profound bullshit title, mundane title,
untitled) X 2 (art type: computer-generated, artist-created)
repeated measures factorial ANOVA revealed a main effect
of title type on profundity ratings of abstract art images, F(2,
398) = 67.00, p<.001, η2
p= .252. Furthermore, a main
effect of art type was also observed, F(1, 199) = 238.69, p
<.001, η2
p= .545, indicating that artist-created art was judged
to be more profound compared to computer-generated art.
Notably, no interaction was detected, F(2, 398) = 2.13, p
= .12, η2
p= .011, suggesting that the effect of title type did
not differ between computer-generated and artist-created art.
Thus, whether art was computer-generated or artist-created,
accompanying the art image with a pseudo-profound bullshit
title enhanced the perceived profoundness of the art image all
the same compared to when the art image was accompanied
by a mundane title or no title.
Follow-up paired samples t-test examining the main effect
of title type revealed significant differences between pro-
fundity ratings given to pseudo-profound bullshit titled and
mundane titled computer-generated art [t(199) = 8.74, p<
.001], as well as between pseudo-profound bullshit titled and
untitled computer-generated art [t(199) = 8.17, p< .001].
No significant differences were observed between profun-
dity ratings given to computer-generated mundane titled and
untitled art [t(199) = 0.25, p= .802]. Importantly, exam-
ining the effect of title type for artist-created art produced
an identical pattern of results, with pseudo-profound bullshit
titled art being judged as more profound compared to both
mundane titled art [t(199) = 8.26, p< .001], and untitled art
[t(199) = 6.67, p< .001], and mundane titled and untitled art
being judged as similarly profound [t(199) = 1.88, p= .061].
Therefore, the results of Study 3 demonstrate how pseudo-
profound bullshit can be utilized to enhance the profundity
of both computer-generated and artist-created abstract art
images. Additionally, this profundity enhancing effect ap-
pears to be unique to pseudo-profound bullshit as including
mundane titles to either computer-generated or artist-created
abstract art did not result in an increase in participants’ per-
ceptions of profundity for these art images.
To take into account item-level variance, paired samples
t-tests were also conducted comparing the same artworks
across title types for both computer and artist-generated art.
For computer-generated art, a significant difference was de-
tected between pseudo-profound bullshit titled and untitled
art: t(70) = 10.83, p< .001, as well as between pseudo-
profound bullshit titled and mundane titled art: t(70) =
10.63, p< .001. Consistent with participant-level results,
no significant difference was detected between untitled and
mundane titled art: t(70) < .001, p> .999. For artist-created
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 666
Table 3: Study 3 Correlations.
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. BS Titled AC Art 2.99 0.75 .
2. BS Titled CG Art 2.34 0.73 .58 .
3. Mundane Titled AC Art 2.70 0.70 .77 .50 .
4. Mundane Titled CG Art 2.06 0.67 .46 .79 .61 .
5. Untitled AC Art 2.76 0.74 .78 .45 .83 .49 .
6. Untitled CG Art 2.05 0.69 .40 .76 .54 .89 .50 .
7. BS Titles 3.58 0.67 .59 .42 .49 .33 .45 .28 .
8. Mundane Titles 1.77 0.65 .37 .51 .56 .70 .45 .63 .22 .
9. BSR 3.17 0.77 .45 .46 .41 .39 .34 .34 .58 .34 .
10. Motivational Quotations 3.75 0.65 .31 .22 .24 .18 .28 .16 .35 .22 .41 .
11. Mundane statements 1.86 0.96 .00 .24 .20 .38 .15 .40 −.17 .53 .16 .16 .
12. BS Sensitivity (Var10–Var9) 0.57 0.78 −.18 −.27 −.20 −.23 −.10 −.20 −.28 −.14 −.64 .44 −.03
Note. Pearson correlations (Study 3; N= 200). AC = Artist-Created. CG = Computer-Generated. “BS Titled
Art” refers to participants’ profundity ratings given to abstract art images accompanied by a pseudo-profound
bullshit title. “Mundane Titled Art” refers to participants’ profundity ratings given to abstract art images
accompanied by mundane titles. “Untitled Art” refers to participants’ profundity ratings given to untitled
abstract art images. “BS Titles” refers to participants’ profoundness ratings of pseudo-profound bullshit
titles unaccompanied by art. “Mundane Titles” refers to participants’ profoundness ratings of mundane titles
unaccompanied by art. BSR = Bullshit Receptivity scale. BS Sensitivity = Participants’ mean motivational
quotation profundity ratings minus their mean BSR profundity ratings. Coefficients of .14 or greater are
significant at the p< .05 level, coefficients of .19 or greater are significant at the p< .01, coefficients of .24 or
greater are significant at the p< .001 level.
art, a significant difference was detected between pseudo-
profound bullshit titled and untitled art: t(70) = 10.70, p
< .001, as well as between pseudo-profound bullshit titled
and mundane titled art: t(70) = 12.15, p< .001. Consistent
with participant-level results, no significant difference was
detected between untitled and mundane titled art: t(70) =
1.83, p= .071. In sum, for both art types the effect of bull-
shit titles on profundity ratings of art was observed at the
item as well as the participant level.
Finally, we report the results of a set of correlational anal-
yses exploring the relation between several key variables of
interest (see Table 3). Most notably, we once again observe
a positive relation between participants’ profundity ratings
of pseudo-profound bullshit statements (i.e., bullshit recep-
tivity) and computer-generated [BS Title: r(198) = .46, p
< .001; Mundane Title: r(198) = .39, p< .001; No Title:
r(198) = .34, p< .001] and artist-created abstract art across
all title types [BS Title: r(198) = .45, p< .001; Mundane
Title: r(198) = .41, p< .001; No Title: r(198) = .34, p<
.001]. Similarly, we observe negative relations between bull-
shit sensitivity and profundity ratings of computer-generated
[BS Title: r(198) = −.27, p< .001; Mundane Title: r(198)
=−.23, p= .001; No Title: r(198) = −.20, p= .005] and
artist-created abstract art [BS Title: r(198) = −.18, p= .009;
Mundane Title: r(198) = −.20, p= .004] across all title types,
with the exception of untitled artist-created abstract art [No
Title: r(198) = −.10, p= .149]. On the whole, these associa-
tions once again demonstrate that participants who fail to dis-
tinguish between pseudo-profound bullshit and motivational
quotations are more likely to judge both computer-generated
and artist-created abstract art as profound.
5 Study 4
Studies 1 through 3 demonstrate the enhancing effect of
pseudo-profound bullshit on abstract art. However, the types
of bullshit used in these studies have been generated by com-
puters. So, although we have demonstrated that pseudo-
profound bullshit can be employed successfully to enhance
the perceived profundity of abstract art in a lab context, it
remains to be demonstrated that the type of language actu-
ally used by artists is perceived to be distinguishable from
bullshit. While both International Art English and pseudo-
profound bullshit appear to share various surface features
(e.g., the morphing of adjectives into nouns), the degree to
which people process both modes of communication simi-
larly has yet to be investigated. In Study 4 we assess the
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 667
similarity between International Art English and pseudo-
profound bullshit by having participants judge the profun-
dity of a variety of International Art English and pseudo-
profound bullshit statements. We hypothesize that profun-
dity ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and International
Art English will be strongly associated.
5.1 Method
5.1.1 Participants
A sample of 200 University of Waterloo undergraduates vol-
unteered to complete a study in exchange for course credit.
5.1.2 Measures and Materials
Study 4 no longer included computer-generated or artist-
created art. Instead, participants judged the profundity of
the same pseudo-profound bullshit, motivational quotations,
and mundane statements used in Studies 1-3. Furthermore,
Study 4 included the addition of 30 real-world International
Art English statements and 7 CRT items.
International Art English International Art English
(IAE) refers to a language used by many artists and artistic
scholars to discuss art (Rule & Levine, 2012). Its key features
include converting verbs and adjectives into nouns (e.g., po-
tential to potentiality), the pairing of like terms (e.g., internal
psychology and external reality), and hard-to-picture spatial
metaphors (e.g., culmination of many small acts achieves
mythic proportions). For the purpose of this study, we had
a hypothesis-blind research assistant gather 30 statements
from various sources (e.g., art exhibition descriptions, es-
says by art historians, etc.) that adhered to at least one of the
key features of IAE. Participants rated the profundity of each
IAE statement on a 5-point scale which ranged from 1 (Not
at all profound) to 5 (Very profound). For each participant,
an IAE profundity score detailing how profound an individ-
ual found IAE statements was calculated by averaging the
profundity ratings provided to each statement.
5.1.3 Procedure
Participants primary task in Study 4 was to judge the pro-
fundity of 80 statements (presented in a random order) con-
sisting of 30 pseudo-profound bullshit statements, 10 mo-
tivational quotations, 10 mundane statements, and 30 IAE
statements. Participants judged each statement using the
same 5-point scale described above. Following the profun-
dity judgment task, participants completed the Wordsum and
CRT (see supplementary materials to conclude Study 4.
Table 4: Study 4 Correlations.
M SD 1 2 3 4
1. IAE 2.81 0.69 .
2. BSR 3.07 0.69 .69 .
3. Motivational
quotations
3.71 0.81 .03 .48 .
4. Mundane
statements
1.50 0.78 −.03 .18 .19 .
5. BS Sensitivity
(Var3–Var2)
0.64 0.77 −.59 −.40 .62 .04
Note. Pearson correlations (Study 4; N= 200). BSR =
Bullshit Receptivity scale; IAE = International Art English;
BS Sensitivity = Participants’ mean motivational quotation
profundity ratings minus their mean BSR profundity ratings.
Coefficients of .14 or greater are significant at the p< .05
level, coefficients of .19 or greater are significant at the p<
.01, coefficients of .24 or greater are significant at the p<
.001 level.
5.2 Results and Discussion
The results of Study 4 can be viewed in Table 4. As pre-
dicted, profundity ratings given to International Art English
and pseudo-profound bullshit statements shared a strong pos-
itive association, r(198) = .69, p< .001, suggesting that In-
ternational Art English and pseudo-profound bullshit were
perceived similarly by participants. In contrast, it was ob-
served that profundity ratings for International Art English
were not associated with profundity ratings for either mo-
tivational [r(198) = .03, p= .672] or mundane statements
[r(198) = −.03, p= .651]. Providing further support for the
pseudo-profound bullshit and International Art English over-
lap, International Art English profundity judgments were
strongly correlated with bullshit sensitivity [r(198) = −.59, p
< .001], indicating that people who failed to distinguish be-
tween pseudo-profound bullshit and motivational quotations
were especially likely to endorse International Art English
as profound.
6 General Discussion
The current study demonstrates the potential for pseudo-
profound bullshit to enhance the perceived profundity of
abstract art. Specifically, over the course of three studies,
we find that simply including a randomly-generated pseudo-
profound bullshit title alongside an abstract art image in-
creases the perceived profundity of the art image. Fur-
thermore, we show that it is pseudo-profound bullshit titles
specifically that enhance the profundity of abstract art, as op-
posed to any and all titles. Additionally, we demonstrate that
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 668
bullshit titles produce the same profundity enhancing effect
for both computer-generated and artist-created abstract art.
Finally, in Study 4 we demonstrate that pseudo-profound
bullshit and International Art English are perceived to be
similar (or the same) rhetorical phenomena by our partici-
pants.
6.1 Bullshit as a Low-Cost Strategy: Art and
Beyond
In most domains success is determined, at least partially,
based on the ability to impress others. In any instance where
humans are making decisions about the quality of output of
others there is room for subjective impressions to influence
outcomes. As a highly social species, it may be the case
that instances where performance is entirely objective are
rarer than those influenced by the subjective opinions of oth-
ers. We theorize that bullshit can be used effectively as a
low-cost strategy to impress others and gain prestige in ev-
ery domain except where performance is clearly and strictly
objective. Maximizing one’s skills and competence in a
domain is typically a long and arduous process. However,
being able to produce satisfying bullshit that can impress
others by presenting one’s self and one’s work as impressive
and meaningful may allow an individual to obtain success in
a way that requires much less time and effort. The results of
the current study exemplify these claims, as we demonstrate
how attaching randomly-generated pseudo-profound bullshit
titles to abstract art images improves the perceived profun-
dity of these images. Critically, this is true even though
images and titles were paired completely randomly with no
effort expended in matching the title to the artistic content.
Thus, we demonstrate how pseudo-profound bullshit can be
employed in the domain of abstract art to effortlessly and
expediently increase the profundity of an individual’s art.
Previous work has demonstrated that people bullshit more
(i.e., make claims less concerned with the truth) when they
believe they will not have to justify their claims (Petrocelli,
2018). To the extent that some abstract artists embrace the
radically subjective view that there is no objective standard
for beauty or meaning, the domain of abstract art may be
especially likely to be permissive of bullshit. That is, the
agreed upon notion that no objective beauty exists and that
all experiences are equally valid may serve to protect the
individual using bullshit from skeptical claims. Therefore,
paired with the fact that the domain of abstract art heavily
rewards impressing others, as opposed to objective demon-
strations of technical skill, bullshit may not only be effective
in this domain (as demonstrated) but also tolerated. On
this basis, one may expect the presence of bullshit to be
widespread in the abstract art world. In Study 4, we provide
some evidence for this claim, as we find that International Art
English, above sharing various surface features with mean-
ingless pseudo-profound bullshit, is judged indistinguishably
from pseudo-profound bullshit by our participants. Thus, it
may be the case that artists have independently stumbled
upon the potential for bullshit to increase the profundity of
abstract art.
Although here we demonstrate that bullshit may be de-
ployed to enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract
art, of greater theoretical interest is the possibility for good
bullshitting to afford a competitive advantage in many do-
mains of human production. Any system where individuals
are rewarded some level of prestige, attention, or social status
for impressing others offers a chance for energetically less ex-
pensive strategies to be employed as competitive short cuts.
Bullshit, with its emphasis on impressiveness as opposed
to meaningfulness and truth, may assist individuals in im-
pressing others, and consequently, in successfully navigating
various social systems. This is likely to be especially true for
social systems which do not place a high value on detecting
and punishing the fakery characteristic of bullshit, as in such
cases the potential rewards of bullshitting may far outweigh
the potential costs. For example, bullshit may be especially
effective as a low-cost strategy for gaining prestige in social
systems in which prestige is rewarded by unknowledgeable
or like-minded individuals, as such individuals may be less
likely to detect and punish the use of bullshit. Overall, the
extent to which bullshit can be effectively deployed by in-
dividuals looking to gain social advantages is an interesting
question for which the current study begins to address.
6.2 Limitations and Future Directions
One limitation of the current study is that it exclusively tests
the influence of pseudo-profound bullshit titles in the do-
main of abstract art. However, the theoretical account that
we propose here leads us to predict that bullshit can be ap-
plied in a wide-variety domains in which competence is not
objectively judged using strict and specific criteria, success
is determined by impressing others, and the fakery charac-
teristic of bullshit is not strictly monitored and punished.
For example, our proposed account predicts that attaching
pseudo-profound bullshit titles to representational art would
also increase the profundity of such art images, albeit to
a lesser degree, as representational art lends itself to more
objective assessments of quality and meaning (e.g., the accu-
racy of portrayal) compared to abstract art which welcomes
more subjective interpretations. Future studies should be
undertaken to investigate the domains in which bullshit may
be deployed to gain a competitive advantage.
Second, another limitation of the current study is that par-
ticipants were exclusively judging various artworks for their
profoundness. There are many other dimensions on which
people can form an impression of a piece of art (e.g., liking,
monetary value, significance and overall quality) and these
may or may not be enhanced by pseudo-profound bullshit.
Future studies should investigate whether pseudo-profound
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Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2019 Bullshit and the profundity of art 669
bullshit titles can enhance peoples’ judgments on these other
dimensions (e.g., willingness-to-pay for abstract art).
Finally, given the pattern of results observed by Eriks-
son (2012) whereby experts in mathematics did not judge
nonsense-math containing abstracts to be indicative of higher
quality science, it remains an open question whether art ex-
perts would demonstrate the effects observed here. If it
is the case that art experts themselves endorse a radically
subjective view of art, then they should behave similarly to
non-experts, such that bullshit should also enhance their per-
ception of an artwork’s profoundness. However, it is also
possible that, similar to experts in mathematics, the acquired
expertise for artists would allow them to distinguish between
descriptions of art that are honest and insightful as opposed
to those consisting purely of randomly generated pseudo-
profound bullshit. If art expertise does allow one to spot the
fakery characteristic of bullshit, at least in the domain of art,
then one would expect that art experts, unlike non-experts,
would not have their judgements of a piece of art affected by
the presence of bullshit.
6.3 Conclusion
Across many domains, people compete for status and prestige
by attempting to impress others. In these cases, despite its
fakery, the impressiveness of pseudo-profound bullshit may
offer individuals a low-cost strategy for impressing others
and gaining prestige. While past work has demonstrated how
people are receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit, the current
study demonstrates a way in which peoples’ susceptibilities
to bullshit can be taken advantage of in a social domain.
Specifically, we demonstrate how randomly-generating var-
ious pseudo-profound bullshit titles and indiscriminately at-
taching them to either computer-generated or artist-created
abstract art images increases the perceived profoundness of
abstract art. While extending the current theoretical frame-
work to new domains is an exciting future prospect, for now
it can be concluded that at the very least, bullshit makes the
art grow profounder.
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