Bullshitters are individuals who claim knowledge or expertise in an area where they actually have little experience or skills. I was reading this interesting paper and below are the summary.
Data: They collected data from over 40000 participants across 9 countries with various socio-economic backgrounds and genders.Â
Other related paper:
Bullshitters are found to exhibit high levels of overconfidence and believe they work hard, persevere at tasks, and are popular among their peers. In another paper (Petrocelli, 2018) with a limited sample size. He finds that participants are more likely to bullshit when there is pressure to provide an opinion, irrespective of their actual level of knowledge. Petrocelli also concludes that individuals are more likely to bullshit when they believe they can get away with it, and less likely to bullshit when they know they will be held accountable for the responses they provide.Â
Some other interesting finds via the paper:
- Young men are, on average, bigger bullshitters than young women.
- Socio-economic advantaged teenagers tend to bullshit more than less privileged ones.
- Immigrant kids are bigger bullshitters then natives in Europe.
- US and Canada kids tops in the list of bullshitters among counterparts in the test from 7 other countries.
The paper also attributes Social desirability bias one factor which results in bullshitting.
You can also find the HN thread discussing the same.
Bonus: I have highlighted some sections of paper with marker and uploaded it, In case you want a quick read and skip many other pieces of literature.Â
