New Research Reveals Who Is Most Likely To Buy Into Corporate Nonsense

This post originally appeared on Forbes on June 17, 2026.

When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that employees would be required to return to the office five days a week, he argued that in-person work would strengthen culture, collaboration, and innovation. Similar explanations have accompanied countless workplace decisions in recent years. Job cuts, pay freezes, and restructurings have routinely been packaged as opportunities for companies to become more agile, resilient, or future-ready.

Whether these explanations are sincere or strategic, they point to a growing frustration among workers that these tough-to-deliver corporate messages often bear only a passing resemblance to reality. The obvious question is: who even falls for statements that seem absurdly false or self-serving? According to new research out of Cornell University, certain characteristics mean some people are more likely to buy into the corporate nonsense than others.

The newly-developed Corporate Bulls--- Receptivity Scale measures individual differences in susceptibility to corporate bulls---, which we will refer to as “corporate nonsense” going forward. It’s important to note that being receptive to corporate nonsense is not the same as being open to general corporate speak. The difference is that the former is a deliberate attempt to manipulate others and is characterized by an indifference to the truth. It is designed to be unclear and to come across as more impressive than it actually is.

Read the rest on Forbes.