Producing and falling for Bullshit: the critical need for bullshit early warning systems (BEWS)

BEWS meter, with microphone.

There is critical research afoot internationally - It’s called bullshitology - and this is no bullshit.

I’ve drawn my prototype above for a Bullshit Early Warning System (BEWS). Put the microphone by your next Zoom meeting, or, on the boardroom table and watch the needle…

Management scholar André Spicer has published in prominent peer-reviewed journals, as well as a best-selling book: Business Bullshit. A recent Spicer article published in the journal Organization Theory has the title Playing the Bullshit Game: How Empty and Misleading Communication Takes Over Organizations.

His argument is that: “bullshitting is a social practice that organizational members engage with to become part of a speech community, to get things done in that community, and to reinforce their identity. When the practice of bullshitting works, it can gradually expand from a small group to take over an entire organization and industry. When bullshitting backfires, previously sacred concepts can become seen as empty and misleading talk.”

Sadly, some components of the public sector are floating in vats of Bullshit. I’ve really ‘drilled down’ into this and I’ve seen the ‘granularity’ of bullshit. In post-secondary, it’s the ‘student-centric’ approach of ‘key performance indicators’ and the values of ‘organizational agility’ through ‘fostering collaboration’ based on principles of ‘honesty’ and ‘transparency’.

Now the danger of bullshit, is that it may be prevalent in the critical work highlighted across the country - some people call it the work of ‘truth’ and ‘reconciliation’ with Indigenous peoples and communities. Or, in some places the terms diversity, equity, and inclusion, added to this ‘justice’. Words with potentially heavy meaning and realities, that must be enacted through clear action and difficult discussions. Sadly, the words are becoming part of bullshitology.

Just because an organization states these words; on websites and in documents; and just because these words are said at organizational meetings and gatherings, with articulated principles of potentially doing something - doesn’t mean they are actually happening. They become akin to New year’s resolutions. Hot in January; forgot by February.

Thus, the study of, awareness of, and calling out of Bullshit - are important. I’ve appreciated the growing number of articles and books exploring this subject.

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Bullshit begets bullshit

Who can avoid reading an academic article - ok wait… let me re-phrase that… as many folks would have their hand up before I even finished spitting out that question.

Trying again, if you are one that reads an academic article from time to time - say a peer reviewed journal article - might you engage an article with an abstract that starts with: “Research into both receptivity to falling for bullshit and the propensity to produce it have recently emerged as active, independent areas of inquiry into the spread of misleading information. However, it remains unclear whether those who frequently produce bullshit are inoculated from its influence.”

The article is published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, and has the title: “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter’ (or can you?): Bullshitting frequency predicts receptivity to various types of misleading information.” The article was published this last year (2021) and the article authors - Littrell, Risko and Fugelsang are based at the U. of Waterloo in Canada.

This area of research - Bullshit - is growing. I can assure you the practice of Bullshitting is prevalent, expanding, and everywhere.

Quite entertainingly, there is some debate about definitions of Bullshit, as well as the identifying characteristics. Much of the discussion has grown out of Princeton University philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt and his 1984 essay titled: On Bullshit. This essay was published in short book form in 2005 and became a best seller on the NY Times list. Frankfurt’s goal was to present a theory of Bullshit. He was successful, and in recent years more and more published research as well as book length explorations are shovelling, itemizing and categorizing theories of the shit de taureau.

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Littrell, Risko and Fugelsang define bullshit “broadly, as information designed to impress, persuade, and/or otherwise mislead that is often constructed with an indifference for the truth.” Building upon the work of others they suggest that “Bullshit can range from coherent yet hyperbolic or suspiciously implausible, to jargon-heavy yet obscure or non-sensical, to technically accurate yet misleadingly irrelevant.”

In other words, bullshit may be acutely intentional, or fuzzily misleading. Research is growing on the ability to bullshit through charts and graphs, through annual reports, planning documents, and official organizational communications.

In a section focussed on the “Transmission of Bullshit”, they argue that there are:

“Two related lines of research [that] have recently emerged investigating individual differences in both the propensity to produce bullshit (i.e., bullshitting) and the propensity to fall for bullshit (i.e., bullshit receptivity) in a host of situations ranging from social interactions to organizational contexts.”

Linked with this are some critical points. Bullshitting is an intentional act; however, its spread is not always intentional.

In other words you might have stepped in your own bullshit; you’ve got it in on your shoe, on the bottom of your trousers, you don’t know it… you spread it unintentionally.

Yet, in other cases, you leave the washroom with the penultimate piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe. You don’t care. You actually post it on your Instagram account with: #freecountry

The challenge with Bullshit, is that it’s like a virus… “I’m sorry Dr. Loewen, you have been diagnosed as Bullshit-positive (B+). You didn’t have many symptoms, but, we can see now that you spread your B+ virus to all these young people in this classroom.”

Ah, damn, sorry, I was just trying to communicate the curricular learning-based objectives that have come from these evidence-based quality assurance accrediting and assessment matrices.

Nope! Bullshit positive; time to quarantine.

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Littrell and gang share important distinctions between Persuasive Bullshit - and - Evasive Bullshit. They have proposed a Bullshitting Frequency Scale (BFS), which based on their research has demonstrated the extents to which a person (I might add organizations too), has intentionally spread Bullshit - engaged in Bullshitting - in various everyday scenarios; and re-distributed Bullshit, knowing it was bullshit.

Part of a Bullshit Early Warning System (BEWS)?

They propose that their Bullshit scale can provide some pretty accurate estimates on Bullshitting, with a focus on two distinct types: persuasive and evasive.

Persuasive bullshitting, within various social contexts, is intended to “impress, persuade, or fit in with others by exaggerating, embellishing, or otherwise stretching the truth about one’s knowledge, ideas, attitudes, skills, or competence (i.e., persuasive bullshitting).

Evasive bullshitting is “when responding to inquiries where direct answers might incur negative social costs for oneself or others.”

There is a third critical component to Littrell and co. research and that is the concept of bullshit receptivity. This “refers to the propensity to ascribe inflated judgments of profoundness, truthfulness, or accuracy to information that is vague, obscure, meaningless, or otherwise misleading.”

This is an area that I would add most organizational Strategic Plans to - an area that management scholar André Spicer has highlighted, and as this section is titled: Bullshit begets bullshit. More on that later in this post.

These researchers have proposed that:

“Given that both bullshit receptivity and bullshitting frequency are negatively related to cognitive ability and aspects of analytic thinking style (and that bullshit receptivity is associated with increased sharing of bullshit on social media), it could be the case that those who frequently engage in bullshitting may be more likely to fall for bullshit.”

This is an important component of their research - and others - as organizations are ripe and rank with Bullshit. See earlier posts on this research blog: bullshit titles, and #stoptheBS.

From a 2017 post on organizational Bullshit

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Another recent paper, with several researchers from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC explored bullshit in organizations, This Place Is Full of It: Towards an Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale (Ferriera et al. 2020).

“The scale is designed to gauge perceptions of the extent of organizational bullshit that exists in a workplace, where bullshit is operationalized as individuals within an organization making statements with no regard for the truth. Analyses revealed three factors of organizational bullshit, termed regard for truth, the boss and bullshit language.”

Their scale was designed with the intent that organizations can measure employees perceptions of bullshit within their particular organization.

These researchers suggest that Bullshit is both a verb “(the act of communicating with no regard for the truth)” as well as a noun “(the information contained in that which is communicated with no regard for the truth)”.

The tools for bullshit and bullshitting, we all know: “in writing (e.g., emails, memos, reports), in spoken form (e.g., conversations and speeches), and visually (e.g., charts, diagrams).”

As this group points out: “It is important to distinguish between bullshit and lying. While liars care about the truth, know it, and deliberately misrepresent it, bullshitters neither know nor care whether something they communicate is true or not.”

I’m not sure I fully agree whether there is a full lack of care when it comes to bullshitting - especially if we consider the ideas of persuasive and evasive bullshit and bullshitting, as a common action. I do fully agree, however, with their statements suggesting:

“Workplaces are awash with many forms of bullshit that manifest in many different ways, including misrepresentation, where leaders make statements without knowing the facts; meaningless job titles; fake and shallow company slogans; and workplace puffery such as resumé. padding…”

Check out the plethora of ‘Strategic Plans’ out there to get your fill of shitty verbosity Or not, and just say you did. This wouldn’t really be bullshitting would it? Or, probably evasive bullshit. Yet, if the ‘Strategic Plan’ is full of persuasive bullshit, and you use evasive bullshit - is this like multiplying two negative numbers together… you get a positive?

In their exploration of other articles and research, this group argues that there are a few positive impacts from organizational bullshit, and this I can agree with having found myself shovelling some out from time-to-time, in the name of necessary politics or otherwise. However, organizational BS also results in lower job satisfaction, distrust in leadership, loss of production and care, and ultimately overall lower organizational performance. [Enter eye-roll emoji from Head BS’er here]

I’ve quite enjoyed scholar and writer André Spicer’s views on BS, and in his 2017 book Business Bullshit where he highlighted that:

“Our organizations are flooded with empty talk. We are constantly "going forward" to lands of "deliverables", stopping off on the "journey" to "drill down" into "best practice". Being an expert at using management speak has become more important in corporate life than delivering long lasting results. The upshot is that meaningless corporate jargon is killing our organizations.”

A 2017 article by Spicer in the newspaper The Guardian, is a fun read. From inboxing to thought showers: how business bullshit took over. This image to the right starts the article and contains some of my absolute favorite ‘piece of shit’ words, that flow around organizations like RVs at the sani-dump on a summer morning at a provincial park campground.

Sadly in recent years, the blasts of Bullshit have grown across the digital ether of Zoom and Teams worlds; computer screens like the old Hollywood Squares gameshow. “Want to be a Teamsplayer, make sure your camera is on…” (what bullshit).

The words to the right are also excellent candidates for a bullshit bingo card - and I’d add to this list of terms “cascading plans”. As if plans resemble beautiful Icelandic waterfalls… now that’s Bullshit too.

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Ferreira and crew, in their initial use of Organizational Perception Bullshit Scale identified three distinct factors (1) regard for truth, (2) the boss and (3) bullshit language.

Regard for the truth, “taps into the fundamental nature of bullshit as a communicative act that tends to disregard evidence and other factual information. It also suggests that employees are aware that such communicative acts are present in organizational life” and a source of much frustration for those same employees.

“While an organizational disregard for the truth may be accepted under certain circumstances, such disregard may lead to organizations making more questionable decisions that could not only alienate employees, but could ultimately put their jobs at risk by endangering the welfare of their employing companies.”

The boss, is the second dimension that arose, and refers to employees who “believe that their superiors are key players in the dissemination of bullshit. Bullshit aims only to serve an immediate end – whether to puff up one’s reputation or to advance their point of view or argument.” One need to look no further than the current Strategic Plan at an organization, for the most recent deposits of meaningless dung.

As Čavojová and Brezina point out in their 2021 article: Everybody Bullshits Sometimes: Relationships of Bullshitting Frequency, Overconfidence and Myside Bias in the Topic of Migration: “bullshitting occurs more likely if the bullshitter thinks he or she will get away with it (e.g., as a function of the perceived recipient’s inability to detect bullshit).”

And an important component to keep in mind “employees are likely to have to take action based on any bullshit communicated by their bosses. As a result, employees are likely to be acutely aware when their superiors use bullshit to advance their own self-interests.” This is where I like to highlight the double-meaning of someone developing ‘their Agenda’ for a meeting.

This particular factor is a big part of why I had to step away from public-sector work and most recently post-secondary administration. The sector plays a crucial and life-altering role for many people (e.g. learners, students, and employees); however, is rife with Bullshit - noun, verb, or otherwise. (see earlier post on the failure of Strategic Plans, and the Moose in the room, that nobody wants to discuss)

The third dimension from Ferreira and colleagues, is Bullshit language, which “considers some of the commonly used types of language employed by bullshitters, namely the excessive use of acronyms and jargon.” They conclude their article:

“This tool also enables the identification of more specific areas in which bullshit might be a cause of problems so that these can then be addressed: Does communication in the organization occur without regard for evidence? Do senior executives purvey bullshit in their communication? Is there excessive use of acronyms (e.g. CPC, LBH, NBD) and jargon (“thinking outside the box”,“low hanging fruit”, “drink the kool aid”)? If these conditions can be identified, strategies can then be developed for remedying them.”

I’ve developed this Venn diagram below, inspired by reading Ferreira et al, as part of the Bullshit Early Warning System (BEWS). Depending on what color you find yourself in - that can highlight your ‘action plan’.

The Bullshit Sweetspot.

So, for example, if you’ve got your bullshit bingo card at your next meeting and you’re hearing the dung drop: “operationalize” and “strategic _____” and “deep dive” and my personal favorite “at the end of the day”… then you’re in the regard for the truth zone.

Then, when it’s a superior, or a senior leader in an organization and they start mentioning “collaborative synergies” and “teamwork” and “evidence-based decision making” - you could be either in the blue zone, or gray zone - the interface between two or more circles. Or, you may even be entering the “Bullshit Sweetspot” - the red zone where all three intermix.

That’s when operationalized synergies go for a deep dive of blue-sky thinking and laser focus, all in a collaborative connection offline for performance managed and strategic outcomes - especially if they are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) involved, as this will blossom into an ecosystem of mutual dependencies, respectful integrity, and dynamic and agile equilibriums.

This idea of KPIs floats through post-secondary these days, like waves of monarch butterflies on their migration routes. I’ve often asked… isn’t A Student the original KPI of the education system? Like, as in, how’s that student doing? Don’t know?, why not ask them? - most faculty do it all the time…

Čavojová and Brezina point out in their research reference to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which suggests that the most incompetent individuals tend to view themselves as more competent than they are (It’s right there with the Peter Principle whereby in most hierarchical organizations people rise to their level of incompetence). They suggested that people:

“who are better at realizing that they do not know something, are also better at realizing that they are bullshitting (i.e., they are aware that they pretend to know more than they actually do), and therefore, they were able to give us more honest answers than people who do not realize the gap in their knowledge and who are not aware of the fact that they actually engage in bullshitting behavior (metacognitive deficit).”

The growing research on bullshit is exploring “cognitive mechanisms underlying the transmission and detection of misleading information [as this is] critical for understanding the persuasive allure of such messages and their power to influence beliefs and behaviour” (Littrell et al. 2021).

Yet, in the literature surrounding leadership, there is much discussion of humility and listening - especially to those that report to you and probably have more knowledge on certain things. Yes, but why show ‘ignorance’ when I can just bullshit?

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Researchers Stokke and Fallis in their 2017 article: Bullshitting, lying, and indifference toward truth, suggested that they characterize bullshitting: “as a mode of speech marked by indifference toward contributing true or false answers to Questions Under Discussion (QUDs).” This is the critical connection with organizational processes and products.

If the QUDs, for example, are what a particular organization is focussing on, and setting priorities towards, over the next year to two - then this can become a ground ripe for Bullshit, or, ideally for specific accuracy and specificity. As we’ve learned over the past two years - “planning” out past five years is riper for bullshit than a 30-day old banana sitting in the summer sun.

If the QUDs have been raised, by say Indigenous communities, leaders, and employees, such as principles of truth, and reconciliation, and collaboration. It’s an important concept in the greater national discussion; however, not a principle that should be led out, defined, and or solely measured/evaluated by people who do not self-identify as Indigenous. If it is being led out by people who do not identify as Indigenous, then it’s in danger of being: 1. not ethical; and 2. most likely Bullshit of the evasive kind.

With this principle in mind; how about the much touted principle of Internationalization. I highlighted the House of Cards that this situation has presented to many post-secondary institutions. And not just me, but Auditor General offices in several provinces. Fiscal realities have made Internationalization the #1 priority for many organizations, because with tuition rates often at 3:1 ratios, how can they not focus on this?

What if we took a similar approach to Internationalization as say, cultural safety - such as the measure of sucess is in the overall experiences of International students as they come to study at Canadian institutions? I wouldn’t want to murky the waters and share how many stories I’ve heard of students and families having to bribe agents (that post-secondary contracts), then landing in a program at the Canadian post-secondary institution that was not the program they applied for, nor, were told they were getting into.

A few years ago in a class of over 30 International students, as a faculty member I naively asked for introductions along a common line. What’s your name, where do you come from, and why are you interested in this field and program you’re in.

I had to kick my jaw up, as not 1, nor 3, nor 5 - but every single student in that class said something to the effect of: “I actually didn’t apply to this program, nor is this the program I was interested in, or, is it the program I was told I was in - I applied for the IT program and when I got here I was told it was full”.

This is Bullshit - not the story, but the common occurrence of what’s been described. This is intended as the use of bullshit to say this is not right!

Caveat here that there are also many stories of life-changing positivity… however, how many stories of bribes and broken promises is too many?

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Spicer concludes his 2020 paper: “Bullshitting tends to evolve and it can be scaled up. When this happens, bullshitting shifts from being a relatively informal practice into a collective routine, then a formalized procedure, and eventually can become a sacred ritual. However, bullshit can also be undermined when it misfires. When this happens, what seems like a sacred value can end up being seen as bullshit.”

In a recent investigation into allegations of systemic racism in health care in BC, Mary Ellen Turpel Lafond, an Indigenous lawyer and former judge, spoke about a ‘Speak-up’ culture that needed to be supported in relation to racism and negative discrimination. Agreed - AND, there also needs to be a ‘speak-up’ culture that supports people calling: “Bullshit!”.

This doesn’t have to be to the depth of whistleblower protection. BC has passed legislation for this, however, it won’t reach post-secondary for about three more years. Added to this, it’s for ‘serious wrongdoing’ not evasive bullshit. Plus, have you ever tried to blow a whistle full of bullshit. Ew!

As Spicer notes, some Bulls have become sacred rituals. Time for the flexibility and safety to call more bullshit, without fear of reprisal. The terms is now as immersed in the academic research realm as ‘evidence-based decision-making’; because, really, who wants a legacy of “bullshit-based decision-making”? (maybe don’t answer that…)