Psychologists Have a New Way to Measure ‘Corporate Bullshit’—and It Reveals a Surprising Secret About Performance |
Psychologists Have a New Way to Measure ‘Corporate Bullshit’—and It Reveals a Surprising Secret About Performance
You should circle back for a confab with workers who are deeply into blue-skying ideas. They may not be a synergistic fit for your outfit.
BY KIT EATON @KITEATON
Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Getty Images
Jargon is either a useful tool to express complex ideas in a short, quick format among a group of experts … or an elitist closed-door barrier to keep outsiders at a distance, depending on your take and, perhaps, your field of work. But new research shines a different light on the matter. It suggests that you should be sensitive to workers who demonstrate an outsized love of corporate jargon: they may turn out to be great at language, but terrible at making real business-sensitive decisions.
The research by Cornell cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell discussed what Littrell has jauntily titled the “Corporate Bulls**t Receptivity Scale,” (CBRS) news site Phys.org notes. Corporate BS seems to be everywhere in business culture from “boardrooms and brown bags to emails and earnings calls,” Littrell wrote in his new study. The problem is that despite its ubiquity it’s actually a “semantically empty and often confusing style of communication in organizational contexts that leverages abstruse corporate buzzwords and jargon in a functionally misleading way.”
If that reads like an overly flowery way of explaining the matter, Littrell has an explanation for this too: technical jargon, similar to the language in his paper, can “sometimes make office communication a little easier” because it can clarify complex ideas neatly, which makes sense if you’re talking about complex, new tech like AI, for example. But in the office, “corporate bullshit confuses rather than clarifies.”
Littrell’s research set out a number of different ways corporate BS can be typically deployed in office settings. It’s not an exhaustive list, but you’ll probably nod in agreement when you read it:
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Managers using BS to dodge “uncomfortable conversations” with staff during performance feedback meetings
Group meetings where someone uses BS to cover the fact they don’t have detailed knowledge about a topic when they feel obliged to speak up with an opinion
Workers trying to impress their peers or supervisors
“Hazy” corporate mission statements with the goal to “craft a noble public image”
Routine company messaging, like shareholder publications, designed to impress stakeholders
Littrell’s work found that while corporate BS can be harmless, if a particular worker appreciates the language in an “inflated, positive way, such as finding it especially profound, important, informative, etc.” then it’s potentially a very bad thing.
His study found too much BS appreciation is “negatively associated with measures of analytic thinking,” meaning typically these types of workers find it hard to perform the kind of high-level thinking that can drive your company forward. It’s also “positively related with other bullshit-related constructs,” which means someone who loves this kind of language may be more tempted to invent other meaningless stuff at work, or make poorer decisions—potentially harming your company.
One good example of how badly overuse of corporate BS can be harmful, Littrell mentioned a famously leaked 2009 Pepsi marketing campaign that read Pepsi’s “DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations” and called for “a gravitational pull to shift from a transactional experience to an invitational expression.” This led to some spicy coverage in mainstream media.