Frankfurt defined persuasive communication that has no regard for truth, knowledge, or evidence as bullshit. Although there has been a lot of psychological research on pseudo-profound bullshit, no study examined this type of communication in politics. In the present research, we operationalize political bullshit receptivity as endorsing vague political statements, slogans, and political bullshit programs. We investigated the relationship of these three measures with pseudo-profound bullshit, ideology (political ideology, support for neoliberalism), populism, and voting behavior. Three pre-registered studies in different cultural settings (the United States, Serbia, The Netherlands; total N = 534) yielded medium to high intercorrelations between political bullshit measures and pseudo-profound bullshit, and good construct validity (hypothesized one-factor solution). A Bayesian meta-analysis showed that all political bullshit measures positively correlated with support for the free market, while only some positively correlated with social (political statements and programs) and economic conservatism (programs), and populism (programs). In the U.S., higher receptivity to political bullshit was associated with a higher probability that one voted for Trump (vs Clinton) in the past and higher intentions to vote for Trump (vs Biden and Sanders). In the Netherlands, higher receptivity to political bullshit predicted the intention to vote for the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. Exploratory analyses on merged datasets showed that higher receptivity to political bullshit was associated with a higher probability to vote for right-wing candidates/parties and lower probability for the left-wing ones. Overall, political bullshit endorsement showed good validity, opening avenues for research in political communication, especially when this communication is broad and meaningless.
