The present study examined two issues; the possible correlation of individual differences in reception of pseudo-profound bullshit and the effect of presence of credible author on bullshit receptivity among Taiwanese. Three hundred and forty-eight participants completed an online self-report measure assessing bullshit receptivity, cognitive reflection, numeracy, paranormal belief and religious belief. Analysis by determining Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients between bullshit receptivity and various variables indicated that receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit was correlated positively with both paranormal belief and religious belief. However, the results showed that there were no associations between bullshit receptivity and cognitive reflection as well as numeracy. Independent T-test analysis indicated that the presence of credible author had insignificant effect on profundity ratings of pseudo-profound bullshit among Taiwanese.

Chapter I Introduction 1
Chapter II Literature Review 5
Chapter III Methods 11
3.1 Participants and Procedure 11
3.2 Materials 12
3.2.1 Bullshit Receptivity Scale 12
3.2.2 The Cognitive Reflection Test 13
3.2.3 Numeracy 14
3.2.4 The Chinese version of the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale 15
3.2.5 The Religious Belief Questionnaire 15
3.3 Internal Consistency 15
3.4 Statistical Method 16
3.5 Data Screening and Analysis 17
Chapter IV Results 21
4.1 Descriptive Statistics 21
4.2 Correlations between bullshit receptivity and other variables 21
4.3 Correlations between the cognitive reflective thinking and other variables 23
4.4 Correlations between numeracy and other variables 23
4.5 Correlations between paranormal belief and other variables 23
4.6 The effect of authors’ credibility on bullshit receptivity 24
Chapter V Conclusions and Discussion 25
5.1 Discussion 25
5.2 Conclusions 28
5.3 Limitations of Study and Suggestions 29
References 33

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