“One man’s bullshit is another man’s catechism.” ― Neil Post, Bullshit and the Art of Crap Detection
“I can explain that.”
Those are probably four of the most often used words in the English language. Separate, they are relatively inconsequential words. Strung together, they are almost always the leading salvo in a barrage of bullshit that typically ends with the person on the receiving end sitting cross-armed and shaking their head. But not a day passes when those words aren’t put to use somewhere.
Hit send on a particularly rude email? “I can explain that.”
Failed to meet a deadline? “I can explain that.”
Late for work? “I can explain that.”
And the beat goes on. Sometimes, you know better than to ask… but you do, anyway. It’s not that you want to hear those four words, it’s the intrigue of the explanation. Sometimes, the explanation actually makes sense. Other times, the explanation drags on like the aftereffects of a mystery meat enchilada you found sitting in the break room fridge.
In those moments, when the explanation is just another round of bullshit, you want a little more than prescription strength Imodium to get you through the day.
WHAT IS IT?
Bullshit isn’t lying. But it’s not nonsense, either. In a 2020 article for Psychology Today, Joe Pierre noted that it’s carefully constructed to appear meaningful, although on closer examination, it isn’t. “A liar knows the truth but makes statements deliberately intended to sell people on falsehoods,” he wrote. A bullshitter, on the other hand, isn’t concerned about the truth as much as they are conveying an appearance of knowledge and authority.
In a 2018 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, John Petrocelli defined bullshit in far more eloquent and academic terms: “Communications that result from little to no concern for truth, evidence and/or established semantic, logical, systemic, or empirical knowledge.” Derived from the work of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt – whose seminal 1986 article, “On Bullshit,” in the Raritan Quarterly Review, should be required reading – Petrocelli sought to answer the rationale being bullshit. Why do people bullshit us in the first place?
WHY DO IT?
People try to bullshit their way through life for a variety of reasons, using exaggeration, distortion, or outright fabrication. But each and every one of those reasons is tied to human psychology. To understand the incessant stream of bullshit, you have to understand the mind that feels compelled to spew it.
In Petrocelli’s research, he identified two main reasons. In the first of two experiments, he found that people “appear to be willing to bullshit only when they feel obligated to provide an opinion.” The obligation to provide an opinion exerts a “potent influence on bullshitting behavior.” In the second experiment, the data revealed that “people appear to be especially likely to bullshit when it may be perceived as acceptable or relatively easy to pass — when they are not held accountable or when they expect to justify their positions with like-minded individuals.” In other words, when they thought they could get away with it, the bullshit came more easily.
“In that sense,” Pierre wrote, “bullshitting can be thought of as a verbal demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect – when people speak from a position of disproportionate confidence about their knowledge relative to what they actually know.” A confident idiot is a recipe for bullshit.
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?
Combating bullshit is no small task. Some people simply seem to have a blind spot when it comes to bullshit. Citing a series of studies published in Thinking and Reasoning, Mane Kara-Yakoubian wrote in a 2023 article, the people most vulnerable to bullshit “not only grossly overestimated their detection ability, but also overestimated their ability compared to other people.” Unironically, perhaps, they possess a disproportionate confidence about their ability to detect bullshit relative to their vulnerability.
It’s a double-dose of Dunning-Kruger.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Reducing your vulnerability to bullshit starts with a sprinkle of humility – admitting that you’re not always the smartest person in the room – and ends with a dash of critical thinking. Simply asking the right questions positions you to not only deflect bullshit, but to prevent it from occurring again in the future.
Asking questions – especially the right questions – is part of the art of leadership. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, intelligent inquiry – in other words, asking smart questions – was emphasized as an essential leadership skill. Citing the experiences of Jensen Huang, the cofounder and CEO of Nvidia, and Jane Fraser, the CEO of Citi, the authors identified five domains of inquiry that facilitate effective leadership while preventing bullshit from entering the chat.
1. Investigative
What’s Known? Getting to the ground truth of facts of a situation can be spurred by something as simple as the “five whys” framework. “Investigative questions dig ever deeper to generate nonobvious information. The most common mistake is failing to go deep enough.”
2. Speculative
What If? Whereas investigative questions help you identify and analyze a problem in depth, speculative questions help you consider it more broadly. A leader can reframe an issue by asking questions such as “What if…?” and “What else…”
3. Productive
Now What? Productive questions turn the dialog to the future, exploring the availability key capabilities and resources and how to balance those in time and space. “They influence the speed of decision-making, the introduction of initiatives, and the pace of growth.”
4. Interpretive
So What? What’s the ‘so what’ is my favorite interpretive question. That type of sense-making question fosters synthesis, pushing others to dig below the surface of problem solving. “Why does this even matter?” is a question that will stop a bullshitter in their tracks.
5. Subjective
What’s Unsaid? The last line of inquiry deals with the elephant in the room. While the other domains deal with the substance of the issue, subjective inquiry deals with “the personal reservations, frustrations, tensions, and hidden agendas” lurking in the room. Get it out there. All of it.
There are always going to be bullshitters in the room, no matter how hard you try to keep them on the other side of the door. Dealing with them head-on rarely changes who they are or what they do. Learning to ask the right questions at the right time puts them in the uncomfortable position of not being able to bullshit their way through an issue.
More than anything else, that keeps the smell to a minimum.
