Timeline of a single conditioning trial.

<p>After the presentation of an auditory stimulus that was 5 seconds long tactile stimulus was presented. Between the onsets of two consecutive trials there were 11 seconds. Figure also shows the time windows in which EDA was scored.</p

Results.

<p>(<b>A</b>) Mean EDA induced by auditory and tactile stimuli during conditioning phase shown for the two conditioning groups (CS+: 250 Hz vs. CS+: 2 kHz). SE is indicated. (<b>B</b>) Average EDA induced by CS+ and CS- in the conditioning phase (the two conditioning groups combined) at different trials. Standard errors of the means are indicated. (<b>C</b>) Interaction effect of conditioning group and sound on loudness (top), fear (middle) and valence (bottom) judgments. Main effects and grand means are removed. SE is indicated.</p

Mean valence, fear and loudness ratings for the auditory stimuli according to the two conditioning groups (CS+: 250 Hz vs. CS+: 2 kHz).

<p>Fear and loudness ratings are z-scores. Valence ratings are on a scale from 1 to 9.</p

Real donations, self-report, and psychophysiological measures of affect for 1, 2, and 8 children.

<p>In Study 1, average donations (in SEK) decreased with increasing number of victims (A) and positive affect was stronger for the single victim (B). In Study 2, donations decreased with more victims (C) and positive affect (facial EMG measurement) decreased with an increasing number of victims (D). ZM activity for one child was significantly greater than for two children (<i>p</i><0.05).</p

Prospect theory’s value function for gains and losses.

<p>Prospect theory’s value function for gains and losses.</p

Overlapping clusters identified in the conjunction task–control analysis (FWE-corrected <i>p</i> < 0.05).

<p>Overlapping clusters identified in the conjunction task–control analysis (FWE-corrected <i>p</i> < 0.05).</p

MTG cluster activity and response magnitudes.

<p>(A) Slices illustrate MTG cluster activity at z = 20 across conditions (<i>p</i> < 0.05 FWE). (B) Average parameter estimates for this cluster across conditions.</p

Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

<div><p>Bullshit-sensitivity is the ability to distinguish pseudo-profound bullshit sentences (e.g. “Your movement transforms universal observations”) from genuinely profound sentences (e.g. “The person who never made a mistake never tried something new”). Although bullshit-sensitivity has been linked to other individual difference measures, it has not yet been shown to predict any actual behavior. We therefore conducted a survey study with over a thousand participants from a general sample of the Swedish population and assessed participants’ bullshit-receptivity (i.e. their perceived meaningfulness of seven bullshit sentences) and profoundness-receptivity (i.e. their perceived meaningfulness of seven genuinely profound sentences), and used these variables to predict two types of prosocial behavior (self-reported donations and a decision to volunteer for charity). Despite bullshit-receptivity and profoundness-receptivity being positively correlated with each other, logistic regression analyses showed that profoundness-receptivity had a positive association whereas bullshit-receptivity had a negative association with both types of prosocial behavior. These relations held up for the most part when controlling for potentially intermediating factors such as cognitive ability, time spent completing the survey, sex, age, level of education, and religiosity. The results suggest that people who are better at distinguishing the pseudo-profound from the actually profound are more prosocial.</p></div

Clusters identified in the Arabic > control contrast (FWE-corrected <i>p</i> < 0.01).

<p>Clusters identified in the Arabic > control contrast (FWE-corrected <i>p</i> < 0.01).</p

A modified value function.

<p>A modified value function.</p