Can We Measure Gullibility?

In today’s day and age, we constantly find ourselves bombarded with an excess of information. Almost every outlet that we access nowadays is accompanied by some sort of message that is attempted to be conveyed. Despite the methods through which these messages attempt to communicate, the end goal is unsurprisingly ubiquitous–to convince. Take a minute to reflect on your personal exposure to advertisements, and general opinions voiced by faceless avatars on the internet, and I am sure that you will find the sheer bulk of information that our minds parse through on a daily basis to be absolutely staggering. In fact, according to San Diego Super Computer Center, the average American consumes nearly 15.5 hours worth of media per day.  I found this finding to be staggering, yet, I cannot help but understand the magnitude of the situation that it frames, as many of my colleagues, the strangers around me, as well as myself, are constantly plugged into the World Wide Web through some sort of channel.

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With this perpetual connectivity seemingly a thing to stay, one cannot help but wonder how well others might react to such an influx of information. Too often, I see some sort of silly Facebook link pasted across my feed detailing some sort of strange new-age prism cure for ailments as diverse as the common cold and AIDS. Compound these silly beliefs with frequent, opinionated vocalizations from groups such as the Anti-Vaxxers, and it appears that there seem to be a noteworthy community of people stuck too deep within the depths of the Internet’s rabbit hole. I understand that it’s one thing to mock these people–and to claim that I am any better than them would be to completely disregard every trivial and silly fad/idea I’ve expounded since I first had access to media–but is there a way to quantify their gullibility? Based upon an individual’s repertoire of communication, is it possible to assign a value towards their exact level of ignorance?

Recently, a researcher named Gordon Pennycook published a paper in Judgement and Decision Making. The observational study took a broad range of individuals from various samples, and exposed them to coherent sentences characterized by the utilization of buzzwords. What they found was that there appears to be a tendency to rate vague, meaningless statements as profound is a legitimate psychological phenomenon, and that the application of this observation towards various variables in other realms of theoretical interest is, in the very least, lent a measure of credence. One of the primary attributes that seemed to contribute towards the acceptance of nonsensical BS was a relatively weak ability adequately analyze. Although this is an extremely vague concept, could this inability to analyze be quantified in any way?

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I firmly believe that there is a correlation between intelligence and the acceptance of the nonsensical. This is not to say that intelligent people are unable to extrapolate value from the absurd, rather, that unintelligent people more than often are more susceptible to conspiratorial ideation.

 

 

Sources:

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/12/01/deepak-chopra-alert-psychologists-assess-bullshit-detecting-senses/

Click to access jdm15923a.pdf

One thought on “Can We Measure Gullibility?

  1. Ty Austin Miller

    I think that gullibility may not have to do with lack of intelligence but a lack of experience. For example, a tourist in a new place is much more likely to be swindled than a regular resident, regardless of intelligence. Similarly, when my mom finds some ridiculous article online and believes it, it is not because she is stupid, but because she just don’t understand the Internet. In a way, having experience is a sort of intelligence, but traditional “book smarts” don’t seem to stop people from being gullible.

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