People who are more impressed by buzzword-heavy “corporate speak” tend to perform worse on measures of workplace leadership and decision-making, according to a new study published in Personality & Individual Differences. Many workplaces rely heavily on jargon-filled communication, phrases such as “growth hacking,” or drilling down one more click.” Although such language may sound sophisticated, researchers have increasingly questioned whether it actually improves communication or instead obscures meaning. Researchers studying “bullshit receptivity” define it as the tendency to evaluate vague or misleading statements as profound, insightful, or informative even when they contain little substance. Previous research has linked receptivity to various kinds of misleading or pseudo-profound language with weaker analytic thinking and poorer reasoning. Shane Littrell, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University, set out to examine this phenomenon specifically in corporate environments. Littrell explained that the idea for the research grew from his own professional experience: “I used to work in a corporate environment and hated it so much that I eventually switched careers.” As he described it, “One of the more frustrating aspects …