Bullshitting as a signal of intelligence

Yesterday's post was a book review of Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West's excellent book Calling Bullshit. One question that probably didn't receive enough coverage in the book is the question of why people bullshit. I guess Bergstrom and West felt that it was self-evident. However, this recent article by Martin Turpin (University of Waterloo) and co-authors, published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology (open access) may provide an answer. They argue that:

The ability to produce satisfying bullshit, with its emphasis on impressing others without regard for truth or meaning... may represent an energetically inexpensive strategy for both signaling one’s intelligence, and deceiving others to one’s advantage.

How does that work? First, it's worth considering what a signal is, and why we provide signals. Signalling is a way of overcoming problems of adverse selection, which is a problem of asymmetric information. Each person knows how intelligent they are, but we don't know. This is asymmetric information. Since we don't know who is intelligent and who is not, it makes sense for us to assume that everyone has low intelligence. This is what we call a pooling equilibrium, and that pooling equilibrium would create problems. If you believe that everyone has low intelligence, it's hard to believe anything you are told (which will make bullshitting as a solution to this problem pretty ironic).

How can someone reveal that they are intelligent? They could just tell you, "Hey, I'm smart". But, anyone can do that. Telling people you are intelligent is not an effective signal. To be effective, a signal needs to meet two conditions:

1. It must be costly; and
2. It must be costly in such a way that those with low quality attributes (in this case, those who are less intelligent) would not be willing to attempt the signal.

Bullshitting is costly - there is a chance that you are caught out in your bullshitting, and people then think less of you (the cost is mostly social in nature). If more intelligent people are better at bullshitting, then it is less likely that they get caught out. That would make bullshitting less attractive of a strategy for less intelligent people. In that case, bullshitting would be an effective signal of intelligence.

Are more intelligent people better at bullshitting? That is the question that Turpin et al. answer in their article. Their research was split into two studies. In the first study, 483 undergraduate students were recruited and given two tests of intelligence (the 'Wordsum' test of verbal intelligence; and Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM), which is a test of abstract reasoning and general intelligence:

...we presented participants with ten concepts (e.g., cognitive dissonance) four of which were fake (i.e., subjunctive scaling, declarative fraction, genetic autonomy, neural acceptance). Participants’ first task (bullshit willingness task) was to rate their knowledge of each concept on a 5-point scale ranging from “never heard of it” to “know it well, understand the concept.” Responses given to fake concepts were summed to create an index of participants’ bullshit willingness, with higher scores indicating a greater tendency to bullshit (i.e., feign knowledge of fake concepts). Next, a subset of participants (Bullshit Producers) were presented with each of the ten concepts individually and... were instructed to “produce the most convincing and satisfying explanation” they could for each concept. For concepts they were unfamiliar with, participants were instructed to “be creative and make up an explanation that you think others will find convincing and satisfying.”

Turpin et al. then had another subset of participants (Bullshit Raters) rate how accurate and satisfying each of the bullshit explanations was. They found that there was:

...significant positive correlations between participants’ bullshit ability and Wordsum scores... as well as between bullshit ability and RPM scores... Therefore, we find initial evidence of bullshit ability sharing a modest positive association with measures of intelligence.

The second study reported in the article expanded on the first with a new sample of 534 undergraduates, by asking the Bullshit Raters about the perceived intelligence of the Bullshit Producers. In addition to similar correlations with measured intelligence as Turpin et al. found in the first study, they found that:

...the perceived intelligence of Bullshit Producers was positively correlated with assessments of their bullshit ability... This association is consistent with the hypothesis that producing satisfying and seemingly accurate explanations of completely fictional concepts is perceived by individuals as a signal of intelligence.

In other words, bullshit ability does appear to be a signal of intelligence. However, there is one inconsistency. From the first study:

...participants’ willingness to bullshit was negatively associated with scores on the Wordsum... and RPM... suggesting that those scoring higher on our measures of cognitive ability were less willing to bullshit.

If bullshitting really is a signal of intelligence, then we would expect more intelligent people to be more willing to bullshit. However, perhaps more intelligent people have a better theory of mind, and so they are more accurate in assessing other people's receptiveness to bullshit. That would mean that less intelligent people are more willing to bullshit because they incorrectly believe that they can mislead others. Alternatively, perhaps the measure of bullshit willingness (which is made up of the number of made up concepts that research participants claimed to know) is at fault. Perhaps less intelligent people, in an experimental or survey setting, are more likely to claim to know things that they don't? Either way, before we can say for certain that bullshitting is an effective signal of intelligence, we'd want to establish that, ceteris paribus, more intelligent people are more likely to bullshit. That is a task for future research.

[HT: Marginal Revolution]