Every office has a person who cannot say, "let's talk about it" without saying, "let's take this offline." Or someone who says, "let's circle back" without saying, "can we talk about this next week?" It's a quietly common phrase we've all adopted at some point, but new research suggests use of corporate jargon might mean you're bad at your job.

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According to research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR) has been developed to assess how susceptible individuals are to superficial and hollow organizational language. Trained on over 1,000 office workers, alongside shareholder reports and executive interviews from Fortune 500 companies, the CBSR was designed to produce sentences that sound like real corporate language, while containing no actual meaning at all.

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Four separate studies across US and Canada have confirmed that this scale is a reliable tool for measuring how people react to corporate jargon. By using standard cognitive tests, the research found a link between how someone responds to this type of language and the analytical skills needed to perform well at work.

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The research also showed that corporate settings frequently facilitate the spread of BS through several key channels, such as performance reviews where vague terminology is used to avoid uncomfortable feedback, group dynamics that pressure employees to contribute opinions on topics where they lack expertise, social signaling to impress management, high-level messaging found in shareholder updates, and annual reports, and corporate branding aimed at public perception. Ultimately, employees are most likely to engage in this type of communication when they perceive a tangible benefit for themselves, their employers, or both.

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The strategist part of the finding isn't that jargon-lovers score worse on cognitive tests, it's who they end up trusting more because of it. People who scored high on the CBSR rated their supervisors as more charismatic, even while performing worse on the tests measuring analytic thinking and fluid reasoning. Littrell put it plainly, "Employees who are more likely to fall for corporate BS ma help elevate dysfunctional leaders who use it, creating a negative feedback look." That's the real cost. It's not one meaningless sentence in one meeting. It's an organization quietly promoting the person best at sounding smart over the person who actually is.

So next time someone tells you to circle back, you now have permission to side-eye.