Whether it’s avoiding the news or checking a bank account, adults often deal with uncertainty by switching off and not seeking knowledge – even when that knowledge could be of benefit to us. Now scientists have identified just when in life we start to choose the “ignorance is bliss” path, opting for comfort rather than uncertainty.
University of Chicago researchers have pinpointed the precise age at which we start avoiding information, a behavior known as the Ostrich Effect (even though ostriches don’t, in fact, bury their heads in sand) – and it begins a lot earlier in life than you might think. In a series of experiments that looked at information avoidance in 320 American children aged between five and 10 years, they found that younger kids actively sought out knowledge, while by the age of seven individuals became information-avoidant if the answers were potentially going to evoke a negative emotion.
“Why is it that children are these super curious people, but then we somehow end up as these information avoiders as adults?” asked Radhika Santhanagopalan, a post-doctoral researcher from the University of Chicago. “What is this transition?”
In the first experiment, researchers looked at five potential reasons we might exhibit this “head in the sand” behavior: to avoid negative emotions like anxiety or disappointment; to avoid negative information about our own likability or competence; to avoid challenges to our beliefs; to protect our preferences; and to act in our own self-interest (perhaps while trying to appear not self-interested).
Different scenarios were then constructed to see if avoidant behaviors were elicited and if these reasons were driving them. One test was to have each child think of their favorite and least favorite candy, and then offer the kids the chance to watch a video about why eating each of their choices was bad for their teeth.
“We found that, whereas younger children really wanted to seek information, older children started to exhibit these avoidance tendencies,” said Santhanagopalan. “For example, they didn’t want to know why their favorite candy was bad for them, but they were totally fine learning why their least favorite candy is bad for them.”
Then there’s the curious case of “moral wiggle room” – where individuals will choose to avoid information for self-interest but do so in a way that doesn’t seem selfish to others. This was demonstrated with another scenario, in which partnered-up children were presented with two buckets of stickers for themselves and their partner. One bucket offered more stickers, while the other was covered and had an unknown amount of stickers. Before choosing which bucket to claim, participants were asked if they wanted to know how many stickers their partner would get.
“We want to act in our own self-interest, but we also care a lot about appearing fair to other people,” Santhanagopalan said. “Moral wiggle room allows us to achieve both goals.”
While knowing how many their partner might get in the hidden bucket didn’t personally affect their own sticker gain, older children increasingly turned down the chance to find out how the other person would benefit. In doing so, it meant there was no guilt that came with choosing the bucket with the unknown amount of stickers for their partner.
“What the moral wiggle room does is allow them to pick the self-interested payoff, while also maintaining the illusion of fairness,” Santhanagopalan said. “That veil of ignorance allows them to act in their own self-interest.”
The findings – that as children got older they increasingly avoided learning information to avoid those negative emotions tied to the knowledge – held true for all but one of the five reasons, and that one was about competence. Kids across the board were not hesitant about finding out if they’d done badly on a test – a situation where the answer could be negative – and the researchers hypothesize that this could be because school fosters growth and positive change, so a bad result is just a minor step on the path to a good outcome.
“It’s possible that because they’re getting all this messaging about how you can change your aptitude if you put in the work,” said Santhanagopalan, “maybe they’re more inclined to seek information because they know they can potentially change the outcome.”
In adulthood, information avoidance is common – it can be overwhelming, threaten long-held beliefs or create fear of uncertainty that is otherwise consciously or unconsciously shut out. The researchers add that this avoidance can have personal and societal consequences, like “deepening political polarization or ideological rigidity.”
The team suggests actively questioning why you might be avoiding useful information, where short-term discomfort is prioritized despite the knowledge potentially having long-term benefits. Then trying to reframe the knowledge as ultimately valuable and useful, making you less inclined to actively avoid information.
“Humans have this propensity to want to resolve uncertainty, but when the resolution is threatening, people might flip to avoidance instead,” Santhanagopalan said. “I think there’s something to be said about being able to tolerate and even embrace some level of uncertainty.
“I think that might help in not falling pray to information avoidance,” she added.
The research was published in the journal Psychological Science.
Source: University of Chicago
