People posting 'inspirational' quotes on Facebook have 'low intelligence': study

Are you a beautiful and unique snowflake? Psychologists say believing these profound quotes might not be the smartest idea

We've all seen them. Beautiful images overlaid with a profound and meaningful quotation, draped across our Facebook or Instagram news feed by a well-meaning friend.

 Well, according to a new study, people who post these 'inspirational' quotes also have lower levels of intelligence.

 They're also more likely to hold religious beliefs and be taken in by conspiracy theories .

 The study, called: " On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bulls**t " measured 845 volunteers across four different experiments.

 The psychologist team behind it asked the volunteers to evaluate several 'profound' statements and say if they agreed with them or not.

To mix it up, the team also concocted several buzzword-filled sentences into a meaningless - or blatantly obvious - statement.

 A follow-up test recorded the participants' cognitive ability through a series of tests.

 "We focus on pseudo-profound bullcrap, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous," explained Gordon Pennycook, a cognitive psychologist, in the journal Judgement and Decision Making.

 "Our results support the idea that some people are more receptive to this type of bulls**t and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims."

The researchers particularly highlighted social media guru Deepak Chopra, who is known to post inspirational quotations.

 Chopra even got a little ribbing over it from physicist and TV star Professor Brian Cox over Twitter.

Of course, it doesn't matter whether you believe these quotes or not. You're still a beautiful and unique snowflake.