Can You Spot Profound-Sounding Nonsense?
Real insight, empty grandeur and plain facts, side by side
A group of psychologists took impressive words - consciousness, infinite, quantum, wholeness - and arranged them into grammatical sentences that mean nothing. Then they asked people how profound the sentences were. Plenty of people rated them as deep, and the tendency turned out to be stable and measurable. This test uses the same method with sentences we wrote ourselves, mixed with genuinely meaningful ones and with plain facts.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Read each sentence once, at normal speed, and give your honest first impression. Some sentences are ordinary, some carry a real idea, and some were built only to sound deep. Judge each one on its own.
What it measures
Three things: how much credit you give to sentences that sound deep but are empty, how much you recognise sentences that carry a real idea, and whether you see depth even in plain facts. The research measured discernment as the gap between the first two. This is not need for cognition, which is how much you enjoy thinking, nor curiosity: it is how you judge meaning on first contact.
Based on: Receptivity to pseudo-profound statements (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler & Fugelsang, 2015)
Possible results
Pull of the pseudo-profound
How deep you find sentences that sound grand but say nothing.
Ear for real depth
How much you recognise sentences that carry a genuine idea.
Depth in the ordinary
Whether you find profundity even in plain statements of fact.
Common questions
What is pseudo-profound nonsense?
It is language designed to impress rather than to inform: grammatically correct sentences built from weighty words, with no claim anyone could check or even state in plain terms. The researchers who studied it used a blunter English word, borrowed from a philosopher's essay on speech that is indifferent to truth. The key feature is not that the sentence is false, but that it is not really trying to say anything.
Does finding these sentences deep mean I am less intelligent?
No. The research found modest links with a more intuitive, less reflective thinking style, which is a habit of processing rather than a fixed ability. Many bright people give language the benefit of the doubt, especially in unfamiliar fields. What the score reflects is how quickly you accept that a sentence means something before checking what it says.
How can I get better at spotting empty sentences?
Try to restate the sentence in plain words, as if explaining it to a twelve-year-old. If you cannot say what it claims, or what would count as it being wrong, it probably claims nothing. Slowing down helps too: in the research, people who habitually pause to check their first impression were less impressed by empty sentences.
Sources
- Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2015). On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. Judgment and Decision Making. doi:10.1017/s1930297500006999
- Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking. Journal of Personality. doi:10.1111/jopy.12476
An honest note All the sentences here were written by Quinthea, following the published method but not using its original items, so scores are not comparable to the research norms. Results depend heavily on the particular sentences, and vague sentences shift in feel between languages. The links with intuitive thinking and belief in false news are correlations found mostly in North American online samples. Critics also note that finding meaning can reflect a charitable, imaginative reading. This says nothing about intelligence.
Try one of these next
How Much Do You Dwell on What You Didn't Do?
The choices that still visit you, and whether it's the made ones or the missed ones
How Resilient Are You?
Not how much you can take. How quickly you come back.
Do You Reflect or Do You Ruminate?
Two ways of thinking about yourself, with opposite outcomes