On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit

[TheRealJoeFish]

What might cause someone to erroneously rate pseudo-profound bullshit as profound?

The single most effective way has been to call it a religion.

They certainly cite quite a bit of religiosity as examples of the mental errors leading to/consisting of bullshit. Some of the paper's thoughts on this topic:

Both children and adults tend to confuse aspects of reality in systematic ways.  Any category mistake involving property differences between animate and inanimate or mental and physical, as examples, constitutes an ontological confusion.  Consider the belief that prayers have the capacity to heal (i.e., spiritual healing).  Such beliefs are taken to result from conflation of mental phenomenon, which are subjective and immaterial, and physical phenomenon, which are objective and material.  On a dual-process view, ontological confusions constitute a failure to reflect on and inhibit such intuitive ontological confusions.  Ontological confusions may also be supported by a bias toward believing the literal truth of statements.  Thus, ontological confusions are conceptually related to both detection and response bias as mechanisms that may underlie bullshit receptivity.  As such, the propensity to endorse ontological confusions should be linked to higher levels of bullshit receptivity. (internal citations omitted)

Translation: Religious people = more susceptible to bullshit.

Beliefs that conflict with common naturalistic conceptions of the world have been labelled epistemically suspect.  For example, the belief in angels (and the corresponding belief that they can move through walls) conflicts with the common folk-mechanical belief that things cannot pass through solid objects.  Epistemically suspect beliefs, once formed, are often accompanied by an unwillingness to critically reflect on such beliefs.  Indeed, reflective thinkers are less likely to be religious and paranormal believers, and are less likely to engage in conspiratorial ideation or believe in the efficacy of alternative medicine. (internal citations omitted, bolding mine)