Search

Judgements of Human- or AI-labeled (actual AI-created) artworks

While there is a theoretical debate regarding the relationship between legality and morality (i.e., Sunstein 1996, Cooter 1998, 2000), minimal empirical work has been done to examine how lay people view the relation between these two notions (Blaufus et al., 2016). The purpose of this project is to examine this question empirically, and extend on previous scholarship with the support of empirical data. This study aims to investigate whether the form of government creating laws (i.e., totalitarian vs democratic) can influence "wrongness" judgements and moral character judgements of the people navigating these laws, and their actions.

The aim of this study is to investigate how bullshitting frequency, bullshitting ability, and intelligence are related. Participants will be asked to rate their knowledge of 10 technical terms, and to provide explanations for 4 of them. Two of these will be fake concepts that they simply have to generate a response for. After this, they will complete the Bullshit Frequency Scale, Bullshit Receptivity Scale, Wordsum and Raven's Progressive Matrices.

Qualtrics Survey for Illusory Pattern Perception Predicts Beliefs in Pseudo Profound Bullshit Experiment 1

Pre-registered hypotheses for Illusory Pattern Perception Predicts Beliefs in Pseudo Profound Bullshit Experiment 1

While there is a theoretical debate regarding the relationship between legality and morality (i.e., Sunstein 1996, Cooter 1998, 2000), minimal empirical work has been done to examine how lay people view the relation between these two notions (Blaufus et al., 2016). The purpose of this project is to examine this question empirically, and extend on previous scholarship with the support of empirical data. This study aims to investigate whether the intentionality of breaking a law can influence "wrongness" judgements of that act, as well as moral character judgements of the person enacting it.

A study investigating the impact of social defection on perceptions of predictability and morality.

Sunk cost and withdrawal aversion.

An experiment in a line of research investigating the role perceptions of predictability play in judgments of moral character, specifically for those acting within sacrificial moral dilemmas.

Previous research has demonstrated that people who are more likely to perceive patterns in random sequences (e.g., coin flip sequences) are more likely to endorse supernatural and conspiracy beliefs. Additionally, past research has demonstrated that those possessing a more intuitive thinking style are more likely to endorse computer-generated pseudo-profound bullshit statements (i.e., statements constructed without any intention of meaning or truth) as profound. The primary purpose of the current study is to investigate the relation between illusory pattern perception and endorsement of pseudo-profound bullshit. We predict that those more likely to perceive patterns in random sequences will also be more likely to rate our pseudo-profound bullshit statements as profound. Furthermore, consistent with previous findings in the literature, we predict that participants more likely to perceive patterns in coin flip sequences will be more likely to endorse conspiracy beliefs.

The present work (N = 1,906 U.S. residents) investigates the extent to which peoples’ evaluations of actions can be biased by the strategic use of euphemistic (agreeable) and dysphemistic (disagreeable) terms. We find that participants’ evaluations of actions are made more favorable by replacing a disagreeable term (e.g., torture) with a semantically related agreeable term (e.g., enhanced interrogation) in an act’s description. Notably, the influence of agreeable and disagreeable terms was reduced (but not eliminated) when making actions less ambiguous by providing participants with a detailed description of each action. Despite their influence, participants judged both agreeable and disagreeable action descriptions as largely truthful and distinct from lies, and judged agents using such descriptions as more trustworthy and moral than liars. Overall, the results of the current study suggest that a strategic speaker can, through the careful use of language, sway the opinions of others in a preferred direction while avoiding many of the reputational costs associated with less subtle forms of linguistic manipulation (e.g., lying). Like the much-studied phenomenon of “fake news,” manipulative language can serve as a tool for misleading the public, doing so not with falsehoods but rather the strategic use of language.

Do people want a big piece of a small pie, or a small piece of a huge pie? Societies differ based on how equally wealth may be distributed over population categories. Rhetoric takes advantage of this with one often cited example being that "1% of the population control X% of a society's wealth". This is often used to compare between societies, for example, one society may have it so that the top 1% of the population controls 45% of the wealth, while in another, the top 1% of the population may control 22%. What these simple comparisons miss however is the total wealth available in both societies. If both countries were equally wealthy overall, one may prefer to the live in the second, more equal society. However, if the more unequal society had an economy 200 times the size of the more equal one, a person might be better off accepting a smaller piece of that much larger pie. We are looking to introduce total economy size as a variable people may use to evaluate which societies they judge to be most desirable.

The aim of this study is to investigate how bullshitting frequency, bullshitting ability, and intelligence are related. Participants will be asked to rate the descriptions generated by the first group of participants based on how satisfying these descriptions are, and complete the Bullshit Frequency Scale, Bullshit Receptivity Scale, Wordsum, and Raven's Progressive Matrices.

While there is a theoretical debate regarding the relationship between legality and morality (i.e., Sunstein 1996, Cooter 1998, 2000), minimal empirical work has been done to examine how lay people view the relation between these two notions (Blaufus et al., 2016). The purpose of this project is to examine this question empirically, and extend on previous scholarship with the support of empirical data. This study aims to investigate whether the legal status of an act (i.e., illegal vs. not illegal) can influence "wrongness" judgements of that act, as well as moral character judgements of the person enacting it.

We are examining whether people’s perceptions of profit and profit-seeking can be influenced by arguments that construct positive or negative associations with profit in the media. We have created statements that outline the mechanisms through which profit-seeking companies can create either socially beneficial or socially harmful outcomes for a society based on the arguments used by experts and journalists. These statements are aimed to be constructed that people would mostly agree with regardless of their intuitive beliefs about profit-seeking companies. We are studying whether providing participants with profit-related positive statements can reduce negative associations with profit. Alternatively, exposure to negative statements may increase negative associations with profit-seeking.

A study pre-reg

Do people want a big piece of a small pie, or a small piece of a huge pie? Societies differ based on how equally wealth may be distributed over population categories. Rhetoric takes advantage of this with one often cited example being that "1% of the population control X% of a society's wealth". This is often used to compare between societies, for example, one society may have it so that the top 1% of the population controls 45% of the wealth, while in another, the top 1% of the population may control 22%. What these simple comparisons miss however is the total wealth available in both societies. If both countries were equally wealthy overall, one may prefer to the live in the second, more equal society. However, if the more unequal society had an economy 200 times the size of the more equal one, a person might be better off accepting a smaller piece of that much larger pie. We are looking to introduce total economy size as a variable people may use to evaluate which societies they judge to be most desirable.

Do people want a big piece of a small pie, or a small piece of a huge pie? Societies differ based on how equally wealth may be distributed over population categories. Rhetoric takes advantage of this with one often cited example being that "1% of the population control X% of a society's wealth". This is often used to compare between societies, for example, one society may have it so that the top 1% of the population controls 45% of the wealth, while in another, the top 1% of the population may control 22%. What these simple comparisons miss however is the total wealth available in both societies. If both countries were equally wealthy overall, one may prefer to the live in the second, more equal society. However, if the more unequal society had an economy 200 times the size of the more equal one, a person might be better off accepting a smaller piece of that much larger pie. We are looking to introduce total economy size as a variable people may use to evaluate which societies they judge to be most desirable.

Supplemental Material, sj-docx-1-evp-10.1177_14747049211000317 for Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence by Martin Harry Turpin, Mane Kara-Yakoubian, Alexander C. Walker, Heather E. K. Walker, Jonathan A. Fugelsang and Jennifer A. Stolz in Evolutionary Psychology

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-evp-10.1177_14747049211000317 for Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence by Martin Harry Turpin, Mane Kara-Yakoubian, Alexander C. Walker, Heather E. K. Walker, Jonathan A. Fugelsang and Jennifer A. Stolz in Evolutionary Psychology

The ability to navigate social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has at least partially formed to best meet the unique cognitive challenges that emerge in a highly social species. Bullshitting, a style of communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for the truth, is ubiquitous within human societies. Across two studies (N = 1,017), we assess whether participants’ ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit (i.e., explanations of fake concepts) acts as an honest signal of their intelligence. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that bullshit ability is predictive of participants’ intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be higher in intelligence. We interpret these results as adding further evidence for human intelligence being naturally geared towards the efficient navigation of social systems. The ability to produce satisfying bullshit may serve to assist individuals in negotiating their social world, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing others and as an honest signal of one’s intelligence.

We propose that predictability is a key factor for judging the morality of others, one which has so far been neglected by dominant theories of moral psychology. Across four studies (N = 1,457 US residents and 81 traditional people of Papua), participants judged agents acting in sacrificial moral dilemmas. Utilitarian agents, described as opting to sacrifice a single individual for the greater good, were perceived as less predictable and less moral than deontological agents whose inaction resulted in five people being harmed. We show that these effects generalize to a non- Western sample of the Dani people, a traditional indigenous society of Papua. This moral preference for deontological agents was not due to a mere misunderstanding of utilitarian principles, as it persisted even when the underlying logic of utilitarian acts was explained. Furthermore, this preference reverses when the actions of utilitarian agents are made to seem more predictable, such as by presenting scenarios in which utilitarian acts involve an indirect (e.g., redirecting a trolley by flipping a switch) as opposed to direct (e.g., pushing a stranger onto trolley tracks) method of sacrifice. Despite the consequences of the sacrificial choice being identical for both direct and indirect acts, people perceived utilitarian agents to be less predictable, and consequently less moral when a direct sacrificial act was performed.