No Joke: BS Is a Signal for Work Competence
April 1, 2026
How many of us have worked at a job and met an individual who used more jargon than a dictionary? Everyone! Do you remember that suspicion at the back of your thoughts that this person was crappy at their tasks? BINGO! Cornell University developed the “the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale, a tool designed to measure how impressed people are by business school-style jargon that sounds strategic but says very little.” The Register discusses it in the article, “Those Who ‘Circle Back’ And ‘Synergize’ Also Tend To Be Crap At Their Jobs.”
Cornell studied corporate jargon and discovered people who found it to be helpful are more likely to struggle with workplace decision-making and analytical thinking. Here’s the just of Cornell’s research:
“To build the scale, researchers ran four studies involving more than 1,000 working adults in the US and Canada. Participants were shown a mix of genuine corporate statements and nonsense lines generated by what the researchers call a “corporate bullshit generator” – effectively a tool that mashes together buzzwords into sentences that sound like they came straight out of a quarterly strategy meeting.”
The participants were asked to rate how useful the statements were or how someone interprets impressive-sounding language. The results weren’t flattering and corresponded to some less than basic cognitive patterns.
Here’s the results:
“People who scored higher on the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale tended to perform worse on tests measuring analytical thinking, cognitive reflection, and fluid intelligence. They also made poorer judgments in workplace decision-making scenarios designed to mimic common business problems. In other words, the employees most impressed by corporate jargon were also the ones least likely to think critically about it.”
Those who found this buzzword users as charismatic and inspiring also used the jargon themselves. Let’s assume that this research nails the obvious as insecurity and the imposter syndrome vie for dominance. [Please, insert your own jargon-filled statement here. Thank you.]
Whitney Grace, April 1, 2026
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
