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http://www.johnvpetrocelli.com/ John Petrocelli Keynote Speaker creating no bullshit, better decision-making, organizations “Your BS detector is rusty. It’s time to sharpen it.” —The Wall Street Journal Connect with John V. Petrocelli petrocjv@wfu.edu ©2023 by johnvpetrocelli.com

Book John To learn more about having John as a keynote speaker for your event, please complete the brief contact form below: Name Email Organization Event date How did you learn about John? Tell us more about your event: Send Thanks for submitting! Connect with John

Bulls#!t Studies Lab PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ~ SONA RESEARCH ASSISTANT SCHEDULE CITI TRAINING BULLS#!T STUDIES LAB - Greene Hall 122 The BULLS#!T STUDIES LAB in Attitudes, Social Cognition and Bulls#!tting is in the Department of Psychology at Wake Forest University and is directed by Dr. John V. Petrocelli. Our research focuses on factors associated with how people process and interpret social information, as well as how people are influenced by information in their social environment. We explore these general interests in a number of contexts including persuasion, judgment and decision-making. RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS How to get involved in research as a student: Students can get involved in many aspects of my research including running experiments, coding and entering data, collaborating on research designs, and helping to formalize presentations and publications. Although some students volunteer, it is possible to earn credit for this work by registering for PSY 280 Directed Study. Undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in collaborating with me on research should contact me early in their academic careers so that they can gain experience over more than one semester. The first semester as a research assistant usually involves helping to run an ongoing experiment. However, as the semester progresses, and in subsequent semesters, students may have the opportunity to develop their own ideas and/or collaborate with me on the design of new studies. COMPLETE AN APPLICATION – Download and e-mail to petrocjv@wfu.edu Frequently asked questions: What is Social Cognition? Often regarded as an approach to studying the social world rather than a domain or content area, social cognition is the study of the processes that operate when people encode, store, and retrieve information about the social world. Researchers in social cognition study the procedures, strategies, and problems that people exhibit when they perceive and judge themselves and others. A main theme of social cognition is the biases that may color people’s perceptions and judgments of others. Social cognition is also concerned with the mental shortcuts (or heuristics) that people use to conserve cognitive resources, form judgments, and make decisions. Thus, behavior is often explained by how we use information, what events we pay attention to, how we interpret information, and how we store information in memory. Automatic and controlled processing is also of interest to social cognition. This distinction helps explain the flexibility of the social thinker. The effects of motivation and cognitive load figure prominently on one’s ability to be an accurate social perceiver. How many students work in the lab? Typically, 1-2 graduate students and 3-6 undergraduates work as directed study students or as volunteers. What basic tasks are involved? Lab tasks include formalizing Institutional Review Board (IRB) applications for new studies, development of experimental protocols and stimuli (using in MediaLab, Inquisit, or HTML), data collection with participation pool students, operating SONA (e.g., assigning credit to participation pool students), data entry (a rare task), and writing up the Methods section of a research report. What are the basic time requirements for lab assistants? Lab assistants typically work in the lab about 5 hours each week (see the current lab assistant schedule below). Additional time is often spent outside of the lab in individual meetings to discuss the progress of a project or to conduct library work. What type of experimental software would I learn? We typically use MediaLab, but wealso use Inquisit for studies that require reaction time measures. Would I be involved in any ongoing projects or new studies? In any one semester, we usually have about 3-6 research projects being conducted; all typically at different stages. All students working in the lab are assigned to work on a project that we both agree is suitable given student interests and lab needs. Individual projects will enable the lab to be productive even when data are not being collected. It is hoped that our work together results in publishable contribution (but this is never a guarantee). What specific types of projects are going on in the lab currently? Currently, graduate students and lab assistants are conducting studies on various topics, which include: counterfactual thinking and mental simulation, attitude change and resistance to persuasion, attitudinal ambivalence, forced agreement scaling, and the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Connect with John

A provocative speaker, Dr. John V. Petrocelli offers practical and actionable strategies that actually enhance meeting professional and organizational goals. By emphasizing social science and the things that successful organizations do effectively, he shows organizations a clear path to accomplishing their goals. About John As an Experimental Social Psychologist Dr. John V. Petrocelli has the goal of helping organizational leaders better position themselves and their organizations to reach their fullest potential. With strategies rooted in scientific research, that’s exactly what he does, empowering organizational leaders with proven tools for improving communication, strengthening influence, and establishing a foundation of evidence-based management. A provocative and convincing speaker, Dr. Petrocelli offers practical and immediately actionable strategies that actually enhance the chances of successfully meeting professional and organizational goals. By emphasizing social science and the things that successful organizations do consistently and effectively, he shows organizations and their employees a clear path to accomplishing their goals. Dr. Petrocelli offers keynotes and seminars on a variety of leadership, communication, and evidence-based management topics that are critical to high-performance in business management, market intelligence, technology, behavioral design, finance, education, and health care. Curriculum Vitae John is represented by Macmillan Speakers Bureau . For more information, contact Scottie Bowditch: scottie.bowditch@macmillan.com Phone: 1-646-307-5567 Connect with John

Connect with John

Resources VIEW RESOURCE Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale Learn more about how much bullshit your organization may be surrounded by bullshit with the OBPS (Ferreira, Hannah, McCarthy, Pitt, & Ferguson, 2022). VIEW RESOURCE Book Discussion Guide for The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit A book discussion guide for a book now being used with high school students in AP English classes. VIEW RESOURCE Bullshit Detection Quiz Most everyone believes they have a good bullshit detector. Let's see how you fare on our test. VIEW RESOURCE Weighted-Additive Model Calculator If you have multiple decision alternatives with multiple features that vary in their importance, the W-ADD model calculator is a wonderful friend to have. VIEW RESOURCE Financial Facts Survey Most every finance expert believes they have a good finance bullshit detector. Let's see how you fare on the FBBTS (Kienzler, Västfjäll, & Tinghög, 2022) . VIEW RESOURCE Financial Meaningful Statements Survey Most every finance expert believes they have a good finance bullshit detector. Let's see how you fare on the FBSS (Kienzler, Västfjäll, & Tinghög, 2022) . Connect with John

Keynote Speaker As an Experimental Social Psychologist Dr. John V. Petrocelli has the goal of helping organizational leaders better position themselves and their organizations to reach their fullest potential. With strategies rooted in scientific research, that’s exactly what he does, empowering organizational leaders with proven tools for improving communication, strengthening influence, and establishing a foundation of evidence-based management. A provocative and convincing speaker, Dr. Petrocelli offers practical and immediately actionable strategies that actually enhance the chances of successfully meeting professional and organizational goals. By emphasizing social science and the things that successful organizations do consistently and effectively, he shows organizations and their employees a clear path to accomplishing their goals. Dr. Petrocelli offers keynotes and seminars on a variety of leadership, communication, and evidence-based management topics that are critical to high-performance in business management, market intelligence, technology, behavioral design, finance, education, and health care. Take a look at his keynote speaking topics below and let us kno w how John can tailor these ideas to your needs. Planning a virtual event? Click here to learn more . Featured Topics THE LIFE-CHANGING SCIENCE OF DETECTING BULLS#!T From every angle, whether it be from colleagues, meetings, or the marketplace of business ideas, business leaders constantly encounter bulls#!t that plagues their judgments, beliefs, and decisions. Short of lying, the sources of bulls#!t pay no attention to truth, evidence, or established knowledge, and use a broad array of rhetorical strategies to sound like they know what they are talking about when their obligations to provide an opinion far exceed their actual knowledge. How informed can beliefs about anything—and decisions based on those beliefs—be if they are based on bulls#!t-reasoning and communication? How can bulls#!t in the workplace be better detected and disposed? This session directly addresses commonly encountered bulls#!t in the workplace and its unwanted effects in the ways of better detection, better disposal, and better decisions. PROMOTING AN EVIDENCE-BASED CULTURE IN THE WORKPLACE What is bulls#!t and why is there so much of it? What effects does bulls#!t have on workplace communication and how can its unwanted effects be replaced by the many benefits of evidence-based communication? Apart from choosing to be smarter, there are critical benefits that, Dr. John Petrocelli suggests, our current way of thinking and communicating in the workplace often ignores. It’s time to stop the bulls#!t with better detection and better disposal of this insidious communicative substance. Based on Dr. Petrocelli’s latest TEDx Talk, Why BS is More Dangerous Than a Lie, his own empirical research, and his new book, The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit , Dr. Petrocelli presents an eye-opening, groundbreaking, and evidenced-based tour of the causes, dysfunctions, and costs of bullshit, showing how it operates in our communicative culture and how you can make significantly better decisions in the workplace. We’ve long assumed that bullshitting is a harmless social activity. Perhaps this is why it is such a common social activity. In fact, research shows there are over three dozen situations and reasons people bulls#!t in the workplace. However, social psychological research suggests we couldn’t be more wrong. Bulls#!t communications, at the expense of evidence-based communication, have devastating effects on beliefs about what is true, memory, attitudes and opinions, as well as judgment and decision making. Dr. Petrocelli explores causes of bullshitting, how to best detect bullshit in the workplace, how to properly dispose of it, and how best to replace bullshit reasoning and communication with its antithesis—evidence-based reasoning and communication. THE ARTS AND SCIENCES OF PERSUASION AND INFLUENCE AT WORK Buy-ins on ideas and best practices do not occur on their own. Without buy-in from the team, any leader is just another tuned-out voice. That is why the single greatest ability that a leader can develop in the ways of selling a product, motivating a team, or growing a company is their ability to communicate persuasively. Dr. John Petrocelli is an experimental social psychologist and an expert on attitudes and persuasion. In this talk based on his empirical research, Dr. Petrocelli takes the audience on a journey to understanding principles of influence and the best alpha and omega strategies of social influence proven to reduce resistance and improve persuasion. In order for things to emerge as best practices within an organization you have to know the behavioral science in order to hone your messages properly and understand how these factors have the greatest impact, leading to the greatest persuasive success. Coming from someone who actually conducts empirical research on the topics of persuasion and influence, he’ll share simple strategies, based on scientific research and proven effective for how to maximize influence and inoculate the established influence from unwanted influences in the way of establishing and promoting best practices. BEST PRACTICE DECISION MAKING THROUGH EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT Dr. John Petrocelli is an experimental social psychologist and an expert in judgment and decision making and one of the world’s foremost experts on evidence-based communication. He is a firm believer in the well-established belief that better information does not always lead to better judgment and decision-making, but that better judgment and decision-making almost always requires better information. Clearly, reaching successful outcomes in organizations will require halting some common ways of making decisions that are so widely accepted and recommended that they are rarely questioned, yet deeply flawed, such as casual benchmarking other organizations, false analogies that pass for best practices, and dogmatism of deeply endorsed, but unexamined ideologies. Yet, there is good news for leaders and their organizations, because every day there are opportunities to use better information to gain advantages over their competition. Doing so simply entails using evidence-based management. The foundations of evidence-based management are the scientifically-supported assertions that recognizing much of the conventional wisdom about management is built on dangerous half-truths, using better logic, employing facts to the extent possible, facing the hard facts about what works and what doesn’t, and rejecting total nonsense that too often passes for sound advice, all empower leaders and organizations to perform better. As Dr. Petrocelli will show you, the practice of evidence-based management is neither mysterious nor extraordinarily difficult to implement. More importantly, evidence-based management produces superior results. Even better, evidence-based management can generate sustained competitive advantages because so few organizations and their leaders do it—let alone do it well—that the probability of imitation will not be high. Previous Clients Include Pohl Consulting and Training, Inc Contact To learn more about having John as a keynote speaker for your event, please complete the brief contact form below: Name Email Organization Event date How did you learn about John? Tell us more about your event: Send Thanks for submitting! Connect with John

featured news articles article Persuasive Bullsh*tters Short of lying, bullshitting involves communicating something with little to no regard for the truth, established knowledge, or genuine evidence. Although most people believe bullshit is relatively harmless... Read More article , video Evidence-Based Leadership with A/B Testing From intuition and common-sense (i.e., conventional management strategies) to maturity and sound A/B testing, better information often lends to better decisions... Read More article Artificial Intelligence Many of us will soon find ourselves embracing generative artificial intelligence (AI) in our daily lives. Those who resist will be akin to those who clung to those outdated library card catalogs... Read More article Business Leadership BS The wonderful thing about the marketplace of business ideas and the leadership development advice industry is that they're full of ideas. The problem with the marketplace of business ideas and the leadership development... Read More article Authenticity in Leadership Some have positioned authenticity as the “gold standard of leadership”. But, what might the readily available evidence concerning authenticity and its link to effective leadership lead us to believe?... Read More article Introversion in the Workplace Because introverts tend to be more reserved, primarily due to their inclination to listen and reflect rather than speak, they may experience lower visibility in the workplace, potentially resulting in missed opportunities... Read More article My 3 Favorite Reads in 2023 I was among the 1,000 authors and super readers asked by Shepherd.com for their 3 favorite reads of the year. Here they are... Read More video Persuasive Bullshitters and the Insidious Bullshit Hypothesis Why are many beliefs based on bullshit rather than facts, data, evidence, or established knowledge? ... See More podcasts and videos video Science of Sports Betting 2-6-2025 WFU professor delves into the statistical principles and mathematical models that drive modern sports betting, explaining how odds are calculated, probabilities are determined, and risk is evaluated. In an interview with Fox 8's Michael Hennessey, viewers gain insight into the science behind betting predictions and outcomes... Read More audio Puffery, Bullshit and Lies 10-16-2024 Robots and AI are being portrayed in overly optimistic videos, television shows and advertisements. Tesla’s Optimus robot is a prime example. In this episode Dwain Allan and Christoph Bartneck interview John Petrocelli and Nick Lee on how this puffery, bullshit and lies affect consumers and vulnerable people... Read More video John V. Petrocelli Psychology Prof. and Juliet Jeske of Decoding Fox News 4-28-2024 John V. Petrocelli is an experimental social psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University and author of The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit breaks down propaganda on Fox News with Decoding Fox News founder, Juliet Jeske... Read More audio Ep 289: The Art of Detecting Teen B.S. 5-13-2024 John Petrocelli, author of The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit, explains how parents can identify when their teens are bullshitting and how to raise teens who critically evaluate the information they encounter... Read More audio Interview with John V. Petrocelli author of The Life-Changing Science of Detecting BS 12-26-2023 John V. Petrocelli is an experimental social psychologist and professor of psychology... Read More audio How to detect bullshit with professor John Petrocelli 12-6-2023 Do you know when someone is bullshitting? What is the difference between lying and bullshitting? To help us answer these questions and many more we have invited Professor John Petrocelli... Read More audio The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit with John Petrocelli 12-13-2022 Did you know the world “bullshit” might just be an Australian invention? During World War I, Australian troops found themselves arriving at the front and suddenly under the command of British officers... Read More audio Dissecting Decision-Making Process through Science with John Petrocelli 11-15-2022 Do you know the consequences of relying on your personal experience rather than evidence? Most people tend to make their decisions just based on their personal experience which can create negative outcomes. You can change this... Read More audio How to Stop Obsessing Over “What If…?” 11-2-2022 Have you ever messed up — or just thought you messed up! — and then obsessed over what you could have done better? This episode is about what’s happening in your brain, why you’re doing it, and how to finally let it go... Read More audio The Science of Bullshit Detection 10-11 -2022 Is bullshitting simply human nature? And how do we tell the difference between bullshit and straight up lies? ... Read More audio Cut the Bull$hit with Dr. John Petrocelli 8-30-2022 Bryan is joined by Wake Forest University's Professor of Psychology Dr. John Petrocelli to talk about bull$hIT. Dr. Petrocelli is a social psychologist who specializes in the concept of BS as a social behavior. BS does not just exist in politics and sales, it is everywhere... Read More video THE OPEN MIND: Detecting Malarkey 5-16-2022 Wake Forest University psychologist John Petrocelli discusses the importance of fact- and nonsense-checking... See More video #591 John Petrocelli - The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit 2-24-2022 A conversation with Ricardo Lopes, The Dissenter... See More audio #018 Bullshitting with Dr. John Petrocelli 12-19-2021 In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Ryan Moyer speaks with social psychologist Dr. John Petrocelli about the difference between BS and lying, the various kinds of BS and why people engage in them, the danger... Read More audio 648 How to Spot Bullsh*t When You Hear It & How to Diffuse and Resolve Any Conflict 10-28-2021 Since we don’t swear on this podcast, we won’t use the word that BS stands for – but we all know what it is. As you are aware, a lot of people fling BS around to try to make themselves look good or try to sell you something. So, how do you tell what is true, what is a lie and what is BS?... Read More audio John Petrocelli | The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit 10-11-2021 John Petrocelli reveals the science behind detecting BS, which has become so pervasive in today's world. What is the difference between lying and bullshitting? What makes BS more dangerous than lying? How do we develop the critical thinking habits... Read More audio X57: The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit with John Petrocelli 10-1-2021 Nowadays, it’s so difficult to decipher what’s truth, and what’s just a load of crap spewed to make a profit. Unfortunately most people don’t have time to research and wade through the mountains of available information and so they trust what they’re told and hope for the best... Read More audio EP 140: Bullshit, Lying, and the Truth with John V. Petrocelli 9-30-2021 In this episode, Kimberly and John discuss his newest book “The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit” which explains the differences between bullshitting, lying, and deciphering the truth. John explains many different facets of how humans are susceptible to bullshit... Read More audio The LawBusiness Insider with Steve Murphy: Interview with John V. Petrocelli 9-23-2021 Bullshitting is a pervasive social behavior involving communication with little to no concern for evidence and/or established semantic, logical, systemic, or empirical knowledge. Bullshitting is different from lying in that the liar is actually concerned with the truth... Read More audio The Truth or Make Believe with Ed Fulbright on Mastering Your Money Radio 9-13-2021 Would your life change if you can detect someone is telling you a BSer? I know mine would. Part of this is determining who is telling you truth or the whole truth... Read More audio Primal Blueprint Podcast, Featuring John V. Petrocelli #519 9-8-2021 Elle Russ chats with John V. Petrocelli – an experimental social psychologist who researches, writes, and speaks about the science of communication and decision making... Read More video EPISODE #207 John Petrocelli — The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit 9-7-2021 Bullshit is the foundation of contaminated thinking and bad decisions that leads to health consequences, financial losses, legal consequences, broken relationships, and wasted time and resources... See More audio #168 John Petrocelli on The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit 9-1-2021 Experimental social psychologist John Petrocelli chats with Trey Elling about The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit . What is bullshit? Why do people bullshit? Who is most likely to peddle bullshit? And how can one properly snuff out bullshit... Read More audio How to Detect Bullshit with John Petrocelli 8-30-2021 Bullshit can be found all around us. But how do you know when it’s actually harmful and dangerous? John Petrocelli, social psychologist and author of the new book The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit joins Modern Mentor for a conversation to... Read More audio The Science of Detecting Bullshit with John Petrocelli 8-27-2021 What's the difference between BS and lying? Is there a reason why it's so important that we learn to detect BS? And what's my beef with Oprah? We discuss this and much more... Read More audio 696: How to Separate Truth from Bullsh*t for Smarter Decisions with John V. Petrocelli 8 - 23-2021 What's the difference between BS and lying? Is there a reason why it's so important that we learn to detect BS? And what's my beef with Oprah? We discuss this and much more... Read More audio Stimulus and Equities, Working in Government, Detecting Bullshit 8-8-2021 This week’s topics include stimulus inequities, working in government, and detecting bullshit... Read More audio The Science of Bullshit with John Petrocelli 7-27-2021 With a little dose of skepticism, a commitment to truth seeking and John Petrocelli’s critical thinking defensive tactics, we can all become bullshit detectives... Read More audio The Science Bullshit with Dr. John Petrocelli 7-27-2021 We are joined by Dr. Petrocelli (@JohnVPetro) to talk about his new book "The Life-Changing Science of How to Detect Bullshit ". Tune in if you want to learn why people likely bullshit more often than you think, what types of bullshit are the worst... Read More audio 333 - John V. Petrocelli (The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit ) 7-25-2021 I interview John V. Petrocelli, Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University, about his new book The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit. What exactly is bullshit, and how does it differ from a lie? Why do people bullshit?... Read More audio Inside the Mind of the Bullshitter: Science Weekly Podcast 10-25-2029 In 1986, philosopher Harry G Frankfurt wrote: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.” This was the opening line of his seminal essay (later a book), On Bullshit, in which Frankfurt put forward his theory on the subject. Three decades later... Read More video Why BS is more dangerous than a lie | John Petrocelli | TEDx University of Nevada 2 -28 -2019 BS'ing (communicating with little to no regard for truth, established knowledge, or evidence) is a major problem polluting our communicative climate. Based on empirical research, John Petrocelli discusses the consequences of BS and how understanding its causes... See More in the news FactCzech | Prerequisites and Consequences of Cowarding | 5/22/2018 WXII News 12 | Is Cheap In and Posh Out? Explicit vs. Implicit Attitudes | 5/30/2009 Scientific American | See Why Everyone Gets the Monty Hall Puzzle Wrong | 7/16/2024 Skept ical Inquirer | Evidence-Based Optimism at CSICon 2022 | 3/1/2023 Entrepreneur | How to Overcome Anything: Stop Obsessing Over 'What If?' | 1/1/2023 Cornelius Today | You might say Dr. Petrocelli has more than a BS in BS | 9/1/2022 Lake Norman Currents | Detecting BS: Social psychology professor shares need for critical thinking habits in book | 8/1/2022 Forbes | Why Do We Trust the Wrong People? | 4/14/2022 Shepherd.com | The Best Books on Thinking About and Detecting Bullshit, Misinformation, and Fake News | 3/21/2022 Next Big Idea Club | The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit | 9/8/2021 Next Big Idea Club | 5 Books About How People Lie, Bluff, and Con Their Way to Success | 9/8/2021 The Wall Street Journal | Your B.S. Detector Is Rusty: It’s Time to Sharpen It | 7/14/2021 Center for Inquiry, Skeptical Inquirer Presents | Persuasive Bullshitters and the Insidious Bullshit Hypothesis | 11/5/2020 Psychology Today | The Psychology of Bullshit | 7/2/2020 The Guardian | No Word of a Lie: Scientists Rate the World’s Biggest Peddlers of Bull | 3/31/2019 Money Magazine | How Financial Fraudsters Like Melissa Caddick Can Fool Anyone | 8/4/2021 NEVADAToday | Community Support for TEDxUniversityofNevada Larger than Ever | 2/26/2019 Nevada Sagebrush | 2019 TEDxUNR Captivates Crowd with Thoughtful Array of Speakers | 2/25/2019 Winston-Salem Journal | Higher Education Notebook | 2/22/2019 Science Trends | Communicative Climate Change: Cloudy With a Chance of Bullshit | 12/17/2018 Government Executive | Men Have Trouble Speaking Up At Work, Too | 10/9/2018 Leader Says What | A Leadership Guide to Bullshitting: 5 Ways to Become a Human Bullshit Detector | 7/9/2018 Psychology Today | A Recipe for BS | 7/1/2018 Psychology Today | What a Bunch of Bull: The Art and Science of BS | 6/30/2018 Paul Taylor | The Rise Of Business Bullshit – And How We Can Fight It | 6/19/2018 DiscoverMagazine.com | What Makes Us Okay With Bullshitting? | 6/4/2018 Big Think | The Results are in From the First Study of What Encourages and Deters People From Bullshitting | 6/1/2018 Quartz at Work | Are You Inadvertently Encouraging Your Colleagues to Bullshit You? | 5/30/2018 Ladders | New Study Explains How to Deter BS in the Workplace | 5/29/2018 The British Psychological Society: Research Digest | The Results are in From the First Study of What Encourages and Deters People From Bullshitting | 5/22/2018 Skepchick | The Scientific Study of Bull**** | 5/17/2018 NiemanLab | You See It, You Buy It: Just Being Exposed to Fake News Makes You More Likely to Believe It | 5/11/2018 Smithsonian.com | Study Looks at Why We All Spew So Much BS | 5/11/2018 Poynter | This Study is All About What Makes People Bullshitters | 5/7/2018 PsychCentral | The psychology of bullshitting: 7 revelations | 4/25/2018 The Wall Street Journal | It’s Time to Tune Up Your B.S. Detector | 3/20/2018 Popular Science | Head Trip: When Should You Change Your Mind? | Spring 2018 iBloomBerg Reports | 9/22/2015 The Wall Street Journal | Conflict Resolution | 9/21/2015 Wake Forest News | Let the Games Take Over | 5/30/2009 Connect with John

Teaching PSY 260 Social Psychology PSY 311 Research Methods in Psychology I PSY 355 Research in Social Psychology PSY 374 Research in Judgment and Decision Making PSY 392 Contemporary Issues in Psychology - Mental Simulation PSY 392 Contemporary Issues in Psychology - Implicit Social Cog PSY 392 Contemporary Issues in Psychology - Misinformation, BSing, and Calling BS PSY 752 Seminar in Social Psychology Connect with John

Research As an experimental social psychologist, my research involves experimental social cognition and judgment and decision making. My specific research interests include bullshitting behavior, bullshit detection and disposal, attitude strength and persuasion, counterfactual thinking and metacognition. Bullshitting Behavior and Bullshit Detection/Disposal. Bullshitting is a pervasive social behavior involving intentionally or unintentionally communicating with little to no regard or concern for truth, genuine evidence, and/or established semantic, logical, systemic, or empirical knowledge. Bullshitting is often characterized by, but not limited to, using rhetorical strategies designed to disregard truth, evidence and/or established knowledge, such as exaggerating or embellishing one’s knowledge, competence, or skills in a particular area or talking about things of which one knows nothing about in order to impress, fit in with, influence, or persuade others. Bullshitting is different from lying in that the liar is actually concerned with the truth – the liar tries to divert us from the truth. The bullshitter doesn’t really care what the truth is, he/she isn’t even trying – the bullshitter may be correct in his/her claim but wouldn’t know it. What are the antecedents, consequences, and utilities of this seemingly pervasive and inevitable behavior? Under what social conditions and/or mental states is bullshitting attenuated or augmented? Under what conditions are people receptive and/or sensitive to bullshit? How can people better detect and dispose of bullshit? Attitude Strength and Persuasion. How do various components of attitude strength (e.g., attitude certainty, attitudinal ambivalence, and attitude accessibility) affect attitude change and resistance to persuasive attempts? How do sub-components of such attitude attributes influence the attitude-behavior link, attitude stability, persistence, and resistance to persuasive attempts? Counterfactual Thinking. Counterfactual thinking involves mentally simulating alternatives to reality and playing out the consequences of those alternatives (i.e., “could have,” “would have,” “should have,” or “if only” thinking). What role does counterfactual thinking play in reactions to general and specific cases? How does it affect memory for previous events? What role does it play in learning and performance on tasks? How does counterfactual thinking affect a physician’s diagnostic and treatment selection decisions? Metacognition. Metacognition involves thinking about one’s thoughts and thought processes. How do metacognitive components of attitude strength affect attitude change? How does a metacognitive aspect of counterfactual thinking (i.e., counterfactual potency) influence affect, judgments of social targets, and decisions? Connect with John

The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit reveals the critical thinking habits you can develop to recognize and combat pervasive false information and delusional thinking that has become a common feature of everyday life. Finalist for the Audie Award for Humor . Order From: What Others Are Saying Connect with John

Virtual Keynote Speaker Today, work includes working from anywhere. Hence, events and training involve conducting them from anywhere. Dr. John V. Petrocelli and his team can help bring an entertaining and enlightening experience to your virtual meeting, and one that prepares everyone to promote an evidence-based culture from anywhere. Change how your organization approaches decision-making with better information, innovation, collaboration, and productivity. As a skilled researcher who actually conducts research on the topics he discusses and an inspiring communicator, John is one of the foremost minds shaping the future of work behavior. Provocative and persuasive, John shares captivating stories and practical takeaways that give audiences compelling insights into how organizations and individuals can do their best work. Take a look at his virtual keynote speaking topics below and let us know how John can tailor these ideas to your needs. The Michael Shermer Show segment Center for Inquiry segment Coaching WBECS segment Executive Forum segment Featured Topics THE LIFE-CHANGING SCIENCE OF DETECTING BULLS#!T From every angle, whether it be from colleagues, meetings, or the marketplace of business ideas, business leaders constantly encounter bulls#!t that plagues their judgments, beliefs, and decisions. Short of lying, the sources of bulls#!t pay no attention to truth, evidence, or established knowledge, and use a broad array of rhetorical strategies to sound like they know what they are talking about when their obligations to provide an opinion far exceed their actual knowledge. How informed can beliefs about anything—and decisions based on those beliefs—be if they are based on bulls#!t-reasoning and communication? How can bulls#!t in the workplace be better detected and disposed? This session directly addresses commonly encountered bulls#!t in the workplace and its unwanted effects in the ways of better detection, better disposal, and better decisions. PROMOTING AN EVIDENCE-BASED CULTURE IN THE WORKPLACE What is bulls#!t and why is there so much of it? What effects does bulls#!t have on workplace communication and how can its unwanted effects be replaced by the many benefits of evidence-based communication? Apart from choosing to be smarter, there are critical benefits that, Dr. John Petrocelli suggests, our current way of thinking and communicating in the workplace often ignores. It’s time to stop the bulls#!t with better detection and better disposal of this insidious communicative substance. Based on Dr. Petrocelli’s latest TEDx Talk, Why BS is More Dangerous Than a Lie, his own empirical research, and his new book, The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit , Dr. Petrocelli presents an eye-opening, groundbreaking, and evidenced-based tour of the causes, dysfunctions, and costs of bullshit, showing how it operates in our communicative culture and how you can make significantly better decisions in the workplace. We’ve long assumed that bullshitting is a harmless social activity. Perhaps this is why it is such a common social activity. In fact, research shows there are over three dozen situations and reasons people bulls#!t in the workplace. However, social psychological research suggests we couldn’t be more wrong. Bulls#!t communications, at the expense of evidence-based communication, have devastating effects on beliefs about what is true, memory, attitudes and opinions, as well as judgment and decision making. Dr. Petrocelli explores causes of bullshitting, how to best detect bullshit in the workplace, how to properly dispose of it, and how best to replace bullshit reasoning and communication with its antithesis—evidence-based reasoning and communication. THE ARTS AND SCIENCES OF PERSUASION AND INFLUENCE AT WORK Buy-ins on ideas and best practices do not occur on their own. Without buy-in from the team, any leader is just another tuned-out voice. That is why the single greatest ability that a leader can develop in the ways of selling a product, motivating a team, or growing a company is their ability to communicate persuasively. Dr. John Petrocelli is an experimental social psychologist and an expert on attitudes and persuasion. In this talk based on his empirical research, Dr. Petrocelli takes the audience on a journey to understanding principles of influence and the best alpha and omega strategies of social influence proven to reduce resistance and improve persuasion. In order for things to emerge as best practices within an organization you have to know the behavioral science in order to hone your messages properly and understand how these factors have the greatest impact, leading to the greatest persuasive success. Coming from someone who actually conducts empirical research on the topics of persuasion and influence, he’ll share simple strategies, based on scientific research and proven effective for how to maximize influence and inoculate the established influence from unwanted influences in the way of establishing and promoting best practices. BEST PRACTICE DECISION MAKING THROUGH EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT Dr. John Petrocelli is an experimental social psychologist and an expert in judgment and decision making and one of the world’s foremost experts on evidence-based communication. He is a firm believer in the well-established belief that better information does not always lead to better judgment and decision-making, but that better judgment and decision-making almost always requires better information. Clearly, reaching successful outcomes in organizations will require halting some common ways of making decisions that are so widely accepted and recommended that they are rarely questioned, yet deeply flawed, such as casual benchmarking other organizations, false analogies that pass for best practices, and dogmatism of deeply endorsed, but unexamined ideologies. Yet, there is good news for leaders and their organizations, because every day there are opportunities to use better information to gain advantages over their competition. Doing so simply entails using evidence-based management. The foundations of evidence-based management are the scientifically-supported assertions that recognizing much of the conventional wisdom about management is built on dangerous half-truths, using better logic, employing facts to the extent possible, facing the hard facts about what works and what doesn’t, and rejecting total nonsense that too often passes for sound advice, all empower leaders and organizations to perform better. As Dr. Petrocelli will show you, the practice of evidence-based management is neither mysterious nor extraordinarily difficult to implement. More importantly, evidence-based management produces superior results. Even better, evidence-based management can generate sustained competitive advantages because so few organizations and their leaders do it—let alone do it well—that the probability of imitation will not be high. Previous Clients Include Pohl Consulting and Training, Inc Contact To learn more about having John as a keynote speaker for your event, please complete the brief contact form below: Name Email Organization Event date How did you learn about John? Tell us more about your event: Send Thanks for submitting! Connect with John