Corporate jargon is more than buzzwords. It’s ‘bulls--t.’

Raise your hand if you hate corporate jargon…

If you raised your hand, you’re likely better at your job than your coworkers who enjoy buzzwords, according to new research from Cornell University.

The research, titled “The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale: Development, validation, and associations with workplace outcomes,” was authored by Shane Littrell, a cognitive psychologist who found a link between people who can spot meaningless “corporate bullshit,” as he puts it, and higher analytic thinking and decision-making skills, he told HR Brew.

“When they hear this meaningless corporate bullshit, they tend to get inspired, and they tend to think it’s really meaningful, and unfortunately, they also tend to make worse decisions than people that don’t find these things meaningful,” Littrell said.

What’s BS and what’s not? Much of Littrell’s research focuses on “bullshitting,” he said, or how corporate lingo or jargon misleads and persuades people.

“You encounter a lot more bullshit in corporate life, especially with their reliance on all these buzzwords and jargon,” he said, offering examples like saying P&L, rather than profit and loss, or EBITDA for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

“It usually makes things easier and quicker in communication, but, in certain corporate spaces, it’s kind of like a runaway train,” he added. “They start using it in more and more complex ways, and it turns into this like tug-of-war or brain measuring contest.”

Littrell said he wanted to measure the link between how people perceive corporate BS and their decision making and cognitive ability. He asked people to differentiate between statements that included corporate jargon and those that included meaningful information about business strategy. Two examples of statements from the research include:

• “As a global leader grounded in a mission to growth-hack and circle back to the human spirit, I have always aspired to grasp exponential connections.”
• “Our company exited doors not aligned with brand status and invested in presentation through both enhanced assortments and dedicated, customized real estate in key doors.”

Can you spot the difference? The first statement includes corporate jargon, while the second—a statement made by former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts in 2013—shares actual information.

“I want to caution against people that conclude from this, ‘Only stupid people fall for bullshit,’” he said. “What it’s really saying is that all of us are susceptible to bullshit that appeals to our biases.”

How BS impacts HR. Corporate BS can sway performance reviews and hurt recruitment efforts, Littrell said. In performance reviews, for instance, managers who use corporate jargon may confuse employees and set unclear expectations.

“A lot of supervisors don’t want to be brutally honest, so they’ll engage in these kinds of bullshitty ways of explaining things…[employees] might mistakenly think that they’re doing a lot better than they actually are,” he said. “Corporate bullshit can have really negative impacts on an employee’s performance and their ability to get better and advance in their career.”

Corporate bullshit can also “attract the wrong types of employees,” Littrell said. Companies that use jargon-heavy mission statements and communication styles, he said, may attract candidates who are more receptive to BS—and, according to his research, have poorer cognitive and decision-making skills.

“It’s kind of like a bullshit ouroboros, that snake that’s eating its own tail…a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.