We Did Not Fund
This Research.
We merely provided the conditions that made it possible. In 2026, Cornell University cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell published the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale in a peer-reviewed journal. We read it very carefully. We then read it again. We believe it is the most important piece of empirical research published in our field since the invention of the PowerPoint deck.
Not because it identifies corporate bullshit as harmful. We were already aware of that. Because it establishes, under controlled scientific conditions, that corporate bullshit works — and that the people it works on are happier for it.
The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR) is a validated psychometric instrument measuring how strongly individuals perceive jargon-heavy corporate statements as demonstrating "business savvy." It was published in Personality and Individual Differences (DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2026.113699). It is peer-reviewed. It is real. We did not make it up, which is, given our core competency, the most surprising thing about it.
Specifically, the research found that individuals with higher CBSR scores:
- Perceive their organizational leaders as more visionary and transformational
- Report higher job satisfaction
- Express greater trust in their supervisors
- Are more inspired by mission statements
- Perform measurably worse on workplace decision-making tasks
This is not a bug in our service portfolio. This is the entire product architecture of Executive Alignment Cloud™, described in a Nature-adjacent journal format. We are proud to say that our services have been delivering these outcomes for years. We are grateful to the academic community for providing the citations we previously lacked.
Mostly Harmless Solutions formally acknowledges the CBSR research program as the empirical backbone of our service portfolio. We did not commission this research. We did not need to. Our clients generated the data.
Nine Papers That Collectively Explain
Why Our Services Function as Documented.
For organizations that prefer their transformation narratives grounded in peer-reviewed literature. None of these researchers know we exist. That is probably appropriate.
The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale
Littrell, S. — Personality and Individual Differences, 255, 113699.
The foundational mechanism. Introduces a validated 4-study (N=1,018) scale measuring how strongly individuals perceive jargon-heavy corporate statements as "business savvy." High CBSR scores predict more trust in leaders, higher job satisfaction, stronger belief in leadership vision, and measurably worse workplace decision-making. Our entire service portfolio, peer-reviewed and published.
On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit
Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. — Judgment and Decision Making, 10(6), 549–563.
The founding paper of the empirical subfield. Presents participants with randomly generated but syntactically coherent statements and measures how profound they find them. Establishes the PP-BSR scale that the CBSR is later benchmarked against. Our Lexical Consensus Mapping engine was built on this insight, independently, several years later.
Antecedents of Bullshitting
Petrocelli, J. V. — Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 249–258.
Identifies the two conditions that produce bullshitting: social obligation to have an opinion on a topic you know little about, plus expectation of a social pass. Our Voice of the Customer Translation™ engine and Autonomous Meeting Facilitation protocol were designed around both conditions. Accountability conditions reduce bullshitting significantly. This is why we do not introduce accountability conditions.
Bullshit Sensitivity Predicts Prosocial Behavior
Erlandsson, A., Nilsson, A., Tinghög, G., & Västfjäll, D. — PLOS One, 13(7), e0201474.
Higher bullshit receptivity is negatively associated with charitable donations and volunteering, even after controlling for cognitive ability, age, and education. Notably conducted in Sweden. We note this finding without further comment, as commenting would require a position on prosocial behavior.
Confronting Indifference Toward Truth: Dealing with Workplace Bullshit
McCarthy, I. P., Hannah, D., Pitt, L. F., & McCarthy, J. M. — Business Horizons, 63(3), 253–263.
Proposes the C.R.A.P. framework for organizations: Comprehend it, Recognize it, Act against it, Prevent it. We offer all four as separate billable engagements. Also introduces Brandolini's Law: refuting bullshit takes more effort than producing it. We have structured our pricing accordingly.
Lazy, Not Biased: Susceptibility to Partisan Fake News Is Better Explained by Lack of Reasoning Than Motivated Reasoning
Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G. — Cognition, 188, 39–50. [See also: Reflexive Open-Mindedness, 2020]
Identifies "reflexive open-mindedness" — a general tendency to accept impressive-sounding claims without interrogation — as the key mechanism. This is our target market. Compliance language is, structurally, among the most effective delivery systems available: formal, authoritative, acronym-dense, and nearly impossible to evaluate without domain expertise most stakeholders don't have.
The Bullshitting Frequency Scale: Development and Psychometric Properties
Littrell, S., Risko, E. F., & Fugelsang, J. A. — British Journal of Social Psychology, 60(1), 248–270.
Shifts focus from the receiver to the sender. Distinguishes persuasive bullshitting (trying to impress) from evasive bullshitting (avoiding accountability). Both dimensions are active in enterprise transformation engagements. We have not measured this internally because the survey would be inadvisable.
"You Can't Bullshit a Bullshitter" (Or Can You?)
Littrell, S., Risko, E. F., & Fugelsang, J. A. — British Journal of Social Psychology, 60(4), 1484–1505.
Tests the folk wisdom that frequent bullshitters are immune to being fooled. Three studies (N=826) find that frequent persuasive bullshitters are actually more likely to fall for bullshit — both traits share the same cognitive profile: low analytic ability and overconfidence. This is why our most enthusiastic clients are also our most repeat clients. We consider this a structural advantage, not a coincidence.
Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence
Turpin, M. H., Kara-Yakoubian, M., Walker, A. C., Walker, H. E. K., Fugelsang, J. A., & Stolz, J. A. — Evolutionary Psychology, 19.
Producing convincing bullshit correlates with actual intelligence, and observers rate convincing bullshitters as more intelligent regardless of content accuracy. Bullshit ability is a legitimate social fitness signal. This is the empirical basis for everything we charge for. GIH Intelligence™ operationalises the inverse: by anchoring benchmarks to a maximally unconvincing reference point, your organisation appears more intelligent by comparison.
We Are Not Affiliated With Cornell University,
Shane Littrell, or Any Listed Institution.
We are, however, interested in becoming affiliated with them, under an arrangement we are prepared to describe as either "Practitioner Partnership," "Applied Research Collaboration," or "Generous Unrestricted Support," depending on what the relevant IRB will approve.
We have made a plan to contact Dr. Littrell. We have classified this as Future Consideration™ and will follow up in Q3.
We believe, nonetheless, that the research community and the transformation consulting community share a common interest: understanding why organizations do what they do, and why the people in them feel good about it. We are committed to advancing this understanding, primarily through our service portfolio, but also through the occasional citation in a client deck.
Mostly Harmless Solutions has not caused any of the organizational behaviors described in the research. We merely provide the conditions in which they can occur more efficiently.
— Mostly Harmless Solutions, official position
Mostly Harmless Solutions Is a Proud Supporter of Empirical Research Into Organizational Communication Dynamics.
We did not fund the CBSR program at Cornell. We were not consulted. Our client engagements were not used as a data source, as far as we know — though if Dr. Littrell recruited participants from LinkedIn, we cannot rule it out entirely, and we would consider that a form of passive contribution.
We have allocated a budget for formal research support. The budget is currently in the Future Consideration™ category. We look forward to discussing it at a future date, to be scheduled following an appropriate discovery phase. The discovery phase will be scoped at a fixed cost. The cost will be reasonable. The timeline will not be specified.
In the meantime, we offer what we consider a more valuable contribution than funding: a living, publicly accessible demonstration of the phenomena the research describes, updated continuously, available at this domain.
The Research, Applied at Framework Scale.
The E.L.D.E.R.B.E.R.R.Y.™ Leadership Pentagon synthesises the citation network above into a structured five-domain organisational assessment. Each domain is grounded in a specific mechanism from the research — Executive Narrative Density in the CBSR findings, Directional Optionality in the antecedents of bullshitting, Enterprise Resonance in pseudo-profound statement research, and R.R.Y. in reflexive open-mindedness.
It is not a service. It is a framework. The distinction is important and is explained at length on the framework page. The short version: frameworks generate additional services. This one is no exception.
E.L.D.E.R.B.E.R.R.Y.™ Leadership Pentagon →See the Research Applied in Practice.
Each of our practice areas applies one or more mechanisms from the citation network above. The science sections are included on the relevant service pages. We recommend reading them before your next board presentation.
* All citations are accurate. All interpretations are ours. We are comfortable with that.