Posting Inpirational Quotes on Facebook Linked to Lower Intelligence According to a New Study

Quotable quotes by famous people, inspirational messages that you feel hits a soft spot in your heart and much more. People in this day and age are so caught up with the busy lifestyle and rely on social media like Facebook , Twitter or Instagram to get updates about family and friends. However, an article in Indian Express said that a recent study showed that low intelligence is connected with being impressed by "profound statements".

Most people like to put these inspirational quotes from famous people like Deepak Chopra and put these so called profound quotes on the Facebook wall of friends and family.  An interesting research said that posting these motivational quotes on Facebook and Twitter are actually dumb and "have lower levels of intelligence".

The psychologists from the University of Waterloo in Canada did the study title "On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bulls***t". The study was conducted to check whether some people are receptive to silly inspirational statements than others. The study showed that there is indeed a definite connection between low intelligence and being impressed by what may seem to be profound statements.

845 volunteers participated in four experiments. Each participant was asked to evaluate a list of statements to indicate how profound they thought they were or if they agreed with the quotes. The list used phrases like, "attention and intention are the mechanics of Manifestation" and "imagination is inside exponential space time events". Most of the quotes were written by the famous Deepak Chopra and were posted on Twitter.

Lead researcher Gordon Pennycook and his colleagues used a website to reach a conclusion. Sebpearce.com to generate random inspirational statements like, "This life is nothing short of an ennobling oasis of self-aware faith" and "Today, science tells us that the essence of nature is guidance", including others. They found that there are people who are more receptive to nonsense statements. The people who were unable to understand a nonsense statement and rated them profound instead were concluded to be less intelligent and less likely to engage in reflective thinking. These people were also found to be more vulnerable to confusion and more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs

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