Abstract art with “pseudo-profound” BS titles seen as more meaningful, Ars Technica

Priming perception –

A study’s colorful language may mask useful insight into how we create meaning.

/ A new study out of the University of Waterloo found that giving abstract paintings “pseudo-profound bullshit titles” made subjects rate the art as more profound than paintings with mundane titles, or no titles at all. Getty / Aurich Lawson / MH Turpin et al.

Abstract art often gets an underserved bad rap. Many people famously dismissed

Jackson Pollack ‘s signature drip paintings in the s, for instance, as being something that a trained chimpanzee could produce. But there might be a strategy to increase the likelihood of people rating one’s art as being more meaningful. Researchers from the University of Waterloo found that providing so-called “pseudo-profound bullshit” titles primes people to perceive a given work of abstract art as being more profound and helps them infer meaning from the art. They described their work in a paper last fall in the Journal of Judgment and Decision Making, with the provocative title “Bullshit makes the art grow profounder.”

That’s certainly one way to snag some attention for a study. But it’s not without risks, as it opens up the group to sharp criticism, especially from artists who might understandably take umbrage at the use of the term “bullshit” with respect to abstract art. But the Waterloo team also argues that the ability to produce convincing pseudo-profound BS might confer a distinct social advantage, bringing rewards of prestige, status, or material goods, particularly in fields (like abstract art) where there is a fair amount of subjectivity in the evaluation of meaning or value.

It’s worth pointing out upfront that the term “bullshit,” as used here, is a technical term. Really. This is not BS in the colloquial sense, with all the negative connotations that implies. In the academic literature, “pseudo-profound” BS is not defined by being false but by being fake, with no concern for truth or meaning. “Bullshit may be true, false, or meaningless,” the authors wrote . “What makes a claim bullshit is an implied yet artificial attention to truth and meaning.” Man’s search for meaning

This isn’t the first time a study on “pseudo-profound” BS has been the subject of an academic paper. Back in 31234, psychologist Gordon Pennycook and several colleagues at the University of Waterloo made headlines when they published a paper demonstrating how certain people interpret BS as deeply profound observations.

They presented several randomly generated statements, containing “profound” buzzwords, that were grammatically correct but made no sense logically, along with a 2016 tweet by Deepak Chopra that met the same criteria. They found that the less skeptical participants were less logical and analytical in their thinking and hence much more likely to consider these nonsensical statements (including the Chopra tweet) as being deeply profound.

That study proved highly controversial, in part for what was perceived to be its condescending tone, although it did snag Pennycook (et al . a Ig Nobel Prize . Another researcher, Craig Dalton of the University of New Castle in Australia,