It’s been scientifically proven that Republicans are more susceptible to bullsh*it
A new study suggests that Republican supporters are more likely to fall for their politician’s BS.
A new paper claims that people who think meaningless statements are profound are more sympathetic to Republican candidates in the ongoing US presidential election.
“In this contribution, bullsh*t is used as a technical term which is defined as communicative expression that lacks content, logic, or truth from the perspective of natural science,” write Dr. Stefan Pfattheicher and Dr. Simon Schindler.
The authors adopted this term to come up with the ‘Bullsh*t Receptivity scale (BSR)’.
The scale measures how likely people are to find bullsh*t statements profound.
“Various forms of bullsh*t exist,” the report notes.
The authors pointed out that their study focuses on one type, which they refer to as ‘pseudo-profound bullsh*t,’.
This refers to statements that sound deeply meaningful at first, but are “actually vacuous.”
The study – originally published in – PLOS ONE magazine – involved 196 American adults being measured on the BSR.
The participants were asked to rate themselves as liberal or conservative, and to give a 1 to 5 rating to six presidential candidates.
The average age was 36, and 57 percent were male – but no information was collected on racial background or education level.
Participants were presented with 20 statements, half of which the authors considered bullsh*t, and half “mundane,” and were asked to rate how profound they were.
Results showed that those who identified as conservative were more likely to find the bullsh*t profound, while liberals preferred the mundane statements.
And although fans of frontrunner Donald Trump – who changes his policies almost as often as he blowdries his hair – rated highly on the scale, they were pipped to the post by supporters of aggressively homophobic Ted Cruz, who were proven to be the biggest fans of BS.
This may come as little surprise to critics of the Texan Senator, who has strongly backed new anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom’ laws allowing religious people to discriminate against married gay couples and trans people, whilst claiming transgender people are a threat to his daughters.
