Chicago Booth Review Podcast When Should You Choose to Be Ignorant?

Jane Risen: Kids are these indiscriminate seekers. They just want to learn lots of information. And yet there is this adult literature that we've been talking about where they will avoid information that they think is going to be harmful in some way.

Hal Weitzman: Sometimes information is freely available and would be useful, but we still choose to avoid it. Why do we do that? And does it make any sense?

Welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast where we bring you groundbreaking academic research in a clear and straightforward way. I'm Hal Weitzman, and today I'm talking with Chicago Booth Jane Risen about her research on willful ignorance. As small children, most of us are permanently curious and we never stop asking why. But older children are more likely to avoid certain information. Why is that? And is our ignorance helping or harming us?

Jane Risen, welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Jane Risen: Thank you for having me.

Hal Weitzman: We had such fun with you last time talking about dialogue and debate. But this time we want to talk about ignorance, willful ignorance or avoiding information avoidance and your research on that. You talk about the ostrich effect when people bury their heads in the sand when it comes to information. So there are some areas of life where we just want to be ignorant. We would prefer to be ignorant even when there is information that is free, would be useful to us, but we just don't want to know about it. Tell us more about the ostrich effect.

Jane Risen: Yeah, this is based on the idea that the ostrich is putting its head in the sand and not getting information that it could. And so that is the metaphor for individuals who are choosing not to get information that's freely available. And as you say, this shows up across lots of domains. People are often reluctant to get information about their health, reluctant to get information about their finances. If they take an IQ test or they're evaluated by other people in terms of attractiveness and those scores are available for them, people will often not want to see that.

And I think of most of this being some sort of protective motivation. So scholars have categorized this different ways. One that I think is pretty simple is to say we're doing this to protect our emotions. We're doing this to protect our beliefs or our preferences. And then we're also doing this sometimes to protect our actions. In the sense that if I know getting this information would require that I act differently from the way that I want to act, then I can avoid that information to act the way that I want to. Lots of different motives. And by domain it may look different, but mostly a protection motive of not wanting to be affected by the information in ways that I think will be not ideal for me.

Hal Weitzman: Right. I mean, I think we could all identify with that. I don't personally want to read about nasty medical things because I don't like to know that information and I don't like to think about it and think death, et cetera. I think it's something that very few people really want to research and read about, right? Some do.

Your research though focuses on what you call active information avoidance. So what's the difference between kind of ... There's this difference in not knowing something. There's lots of stuff that we all don't know stuff. But there's a lot of stuff also that we're deliberately-

Jane Risen: Yeah.

Hal Weitzman: ... we know we could get, but we just don't want to know about. And sometimes it strikes me that's a good thing. I mean, we say to people, don't check your stock market portfolio every day because it's not good for your mental health to check it. Only check it when the market's going up or whatever. Not when the market's going down. So I mean, what is the difference between these two things? Not knowing something and deliberately not trying to learn about it?

Jane Risen: So it's important in the research we try to focus specifically on this active avoidance because as you say, there's an infinite number of things that I don't know. And I am probably indifferent to learning about a whole lot of those things. And so I don't think of the fact that I'm indifferent to learning something as being avoidant or active avoidant.

What we are trying to do in our studies is basically make it so that this information is right here. It's free. You don't have to do anything to get it. Would you like it? And if they say no in that setting, I'm assuming that it's not just that they're indifferent about whether or not they get it, but they have a motivation not to get it.

And to your second point, it's not a mistake necessarily. I think it can be a very sophisticated strategy in certain settings. And the one that you suggest about avoiding looking at stocks is a great example. That we know over time the stocks tend to be a better place to have your money, especially if you have a long time horizon. And behavioral economists, people think about the equity premium puzzle. Why aren't people investing more in stocks? And one answer is because it feels so bad. Every time I look, if it goes down a little bit, it's emotional. And so even though there are also times when it goes up, those downturns are really hurting me. And so I might actually be less likely to keep my money in the place that would be most useful for my money to be because I'm getting this information too often.

And so as you say, sometimes the advice is don't look very often. Only look whether it's once a month, once a year, whatever is sort of sensible for your time horizon. So just because you're avoiding information, I don't think that in and of itself makes it a mistake. I think there are times when it will be a mistake, but I think there are also times when it is-

Hal Weitzman: Where it's perfectly rational. Yeah.

Jane Risen: Where it's perfectly rational to do that.

Hal Weitzman: Right. And good for your mental health, presumably. Which is, as you say at the beginning, that's a lot of what's behind this.

Now you did research with your collaborators on working with kids to learn more about this. And I want you to define a couple of terms. One is indiscriminate seekers. What makes an indiscriminate seeker? And the other one is selective avoiders. So just define those terms for us.

Jane Risen: So indiscriminate seekers just basically is a way of saying that you are interested in all information. That I am just a curious individual and basically I'm not indifferent or avoiding anything. I want to know everything. And selective-

Hal Weitzman: Avoiders.

Jane Risen: When I'm being a selective avoider instead being deliberate and intentional about avoiding some sorts of information because I think it will have some negative effect on me to get that information.

And so I had been doing research in information avoidance for a number of years. But only fairly recently started working with two developmental scholars, Katie and Radhika, on thinking about how kids avoid information. Whether they do and when they start to. Because what makes this so interesting is that studies of kids have shown them to be incredibly curious. Kids are these indiscriminate seekers. They just want to learn lots of information.

And yet there is this adult literature that we've been talking about where they will avoid information that they think is going to be harmful in some way. And so then our question was, how do you get these little kids who want to know everything? Why, why, why, why, why? Turning into these adults that are avoiding some kinds of information? When does that start and why does that start? And so that was-

Hal Weitzman: And you identified that as being somewhere between around six years old and around nine or ten years old, right? So the five and six-year-olds you looked at were generally indiscriminate seekers, the why, why, why's. And the nine and tens just a few years later tended to be selective avoiders. So is that when it happens?

Jane Risen: So we ran several studies. And as you say, the age range we were using was five to ten- year-old, these were all American kids. And just as you say, the youngest age group in our sample, the five to six-year-olds were not showing information avoidance because basically they were showing interest in all information. If it would make them feel disappointed, no problem. If it would make them feel excited, no problem. It was just they wanted all the information.

And then in our six to seven-year-old group and our nine to ten-year-old group, that's where we started to see information avoidance and more among the older kids. So it seems like it was steadily growing. So there does seem to be something in this window that is changing, leading people from being interested in all information to being more thoughtful about how that information will affect them.

We had one study that was focused on these youngest kids where we did find information avoidance. And this is actually I think what helps us unpack a little bit about what's changing. So in this study, instead of just asking them, do you want the information or do you not want the information? We framed the whole thing as a game. And we said either this is the curiosity game or we said this is the happiness game.

And so depending on which condition the kid was in, they would go through and make their decisions about whether to get information either with the goal to be curious or with the goal to be happy. And not surprisingly, when they had a curiosity goal, they wanted all the information, that looked just like we saw before. Interestingly, when we gave them the happiness goal, they started to show information avoidance.

So once we told them your goal is to be happy, then they knew, oh, this is information that would not make me happy. And they were less likely to get it. They would be more likely to avoid it. So they started to look like the older kids, but only if we gave them the very explicit goal to try to be happy.

So what that tells me is part of what's changing between the youngest kids in our sample and the slightly older kids in our sample is the tendency to spontaneously think about managing your emotions. So when they're given the goal to manage their emotions, they can think about which one will affect me in which way. But it seems like our five to six-year-olds, when they're identifying information they want in the world, it's not first order for them to think, and how will it make me feel?

Only when we prompt them to think about how it will make them feel do they actually show the avoidance. And so that seems to be one thing that's changing developmentally where they are more likely to be forecasting, how will this impact my emotion?

Hal Weitzman: I mean, is it possible that just comes from experience that they've had more times being upset so they know what's going to upset them?

Jane Risen: Well, it could be. But the fact that they avoid when you give them the goal says that they do know whether it will upset them. They're just not thinking about it ahead of time. So it seems more to me about this sort of theory of mind where I am trying to track both the world in which I get the information, how I would feel there, the world in which I'm not getting the information and how I would feel there, and setting it as a priority of trying to feel better.

So I do think that experience certainly is going to play a role in this, but I think they have enough experience to know which information would make them feel good or bad. But what they don't do is spontaneously think about, should I get information based on whether it would make me feel good or bad?

Hal Weitzman: Something else I wanted to ask you about that came from your research with these kids was about moral wiggle room, something that I'm guessing a lot of us are familiar with. And so this idea that older children use this to act in their own self-interest, but they kind of get the feeling of having acted fairly. Tell us a bit more about moral wiggle room.

Jane Risen: Yeah. So we created a moral wiggle room study for children that was based on a wonderful study Jason Dana and his colleagues ran on adults many years back and has been run in many different ways. The idea is simply I'm presented with a choice and my payment depends on my choice. So you can choose bucket A or you can choose bucket B, and this is how much you earn if A is the one you choose, this is how much you earn if B is the one you choose.

But it also affects somebody else's outcomes. And so how? We can say that your outcomes are also going to be affected by A or B. And in these original studies, it was simply you would ask people, do you want to choose between A and B now when you see how it's going to affect your outcomes? Or do you first want to find out how it's going to affect the other person? So I would be asked, do I want to know how it's going to affect how when I choose between buckets A and B? And so what you see in adults and we see in this older sample of children is that people avoid finding out how their choice would affect the other person because that makes it easier for me to make the self-interested choice.

So if bucket A is going to give me more money than bucket B, I want to be able to choose bucket A without knowing that I could be screwing you over. And if I don't ever find out, then I know I didn't make a decision that was against your best interests. But I was still able to make a decision under my best interest. And so that moral wiggle room is a way for me to feel like I am acting fairly, but I did that only by avoiding information. I've created some ambiguity because it's possible that the one I chose also helped you. And I can think that that's the case without ever finding out that I was wrong.

And so when we adapt this study, we run it very similarly except we're using stickers as the prizes. And so kids get to see with the red bucket, I get two stickers. With the blue bucket, I get six stickers. Do I want to find out how many stickers the other kid will get before I make my decision? And the older kids are more likely to avoid that information than the younger kids. I should also say the younger kids are also happy to screw you over a little bit more. So you can see the relationship between that the avoidance helps you make the self-interested choice for older kids. Younger kids will make the self-interested choice often even if they know they get all the information. Choosing the blue bucket is good for me and bad for you. No problem. I'm going to choose that one.

Hal Weitzman: So it does never work with little kids. But it sounds like the older kids, based on what you said earlier, these are the kids who are in the nine and ten category. They are more like us adults.

Jane Risen: Yes.

Hal Weitzman: Yeah. So that's where that is set. We already know at that point we just don't want to know how it's going to affect somebody else. We just want to know how it's going to affect us.

Jane Risen: Yeah. Even in the six to seven-year-olds, we're already seeing that pattern. And so just like with the earlier study, which we had done to try to explore different motivations, things about how something would make you feel and someone shares questioning your beliefs and all sorts of things. In the moral wiggle room study, we find a very similar pattern where the five to six-year-olds are not showing any evidence of avoidance, whereas the older kids are. And it seems to be the fact that they are avoiding the information makes it easier for them to choose the self-interested option, which is what we also see in adults.

Hal Weitzman: Carry the Two is the show that pulls back the curtain to reveal the mathematical and statistical gears that turn the world. Co-hosts Sadie Witkowski and Ian Martin bring unique perspectives from the fields of mathematics and statistics to convey how mathematical research drives the world around us. With each episode tackling a different topic, subscribe to Carry the Two, part of the award-winning University of Chicago Podcast Network.

Jane Risen, in the first half we talked about your research about willful ignorance. You gave us examples when people might want to deliberately avoid certain amounts of information that's freely available that would be helpful, but they know that it's not going to help them. It's not going to be good for their mental health to look at it. And you describe in your research, you talk about ignorance that can be used as a strategic tool. So how can being willfully ignorant actually be a sophisticated social move?

Jane Risen: So one I think maybe classic example that helps us think about this is something like Odysseus. When he's traveling by the sirens, he has his crewmates stuff wax into their ears. And this is a great example of sophisticated thinking because you are explicitly avoiding information, the sounds, the music, the songs that you know is going to tempt you. And so here we see that you're avoiding the temptation deliberately to make the decision that is better for what you need to do.

In some of my earlier work, we can actually find this kind of avoidance if you flip it where I avoid information so that I can engage in a temptation. So for example, people don't want to know how many calories are in a dessert because that might make it less likely that they order it. Or if they order it, they're going to enjoy it less while they're eating it. And so that too can be though about as a sophisticated strategy. Now it's not to get me toward my long-term goal necessarily or my health goal anyway. But it's supporting this goal that I have of getting to eat this delicious dessert. And so if I avoid this information, I know I'm going to be more likely and will enjoy it more.

And so anytime you are thinking about the fact that the information is going to change how you act or how you feel and you deliberately avoid the information to make one of those more likely, I would consider that sophisticated. I don't mean to say it's sophisticated in the sense that it's always going to get you to your goals. But it's a sophisticated strategy in that I'm having to think through not-

Hal Weitzman: How am I going to do it?

Jane Risen: ... just one world, but these different worlds.

Hal Weitzman: It's such an interesting example because the whole idea of publishing calorie counts on menus and you go to Starbucks and you suddenly find out your favorite drink is double the recommended daily intake of calories or whatever. And we assume that that's a good thing. It's transparent, people know what it is. But as you say, maybe there's a cost in terms of people's mental health or whatever that they're not really enjoying the things that they deserve to enjoy.

Jane Risen: Yeah. And we find in some of our earlier work, we find that people are avoiding information that we know affects their decisions. Which means so when they have the choice of avoiding it or not, they will say, "I don't want it." If you provide that information, it is affecting their decision. But the part that's unclear, as we were saying in the beginning, that makes me think that there is a mistake. But I don't know what the mistake is. Is the mistake to avoid the information? Or is the mistake to be affected by the information that I don't think I should be affected by? Is it a mistake to avoid the calories? Or is it a mistake to be influenced by the calories if I want to have this indulgence?

Especially in some of those studies we can sort of change whether it's a special occasion. So you might want to avoid the calories when it's your birthday cake, but you want to look at the calories on every other day of the week. And so you could think about the fact that you're avoiding something that would affect you.

Hal Weitzman: I'm thinking of another example is going on vacation and not checking the exchange rates. So just using your credit ... Or not even looking at the bill. Just using your credit card, you can mentally say, "Well, I'm on vacation, no rules, spend as much as ..." Then you have to deal with it another day. But right now I'm going to enjoy myself.

Jane Risen: Yes. And so you would say in terms of the hedonic experience, the avoiding that is super useful. In terms of the financial implications, it's harder to say. I mean, I assume it leads to more spending, which is not good. But depending on your particular financial situation, you can decide if that was okay or not okay. But it depends on what your goal was.

Hal Weitzman: Don't worry. We're not going to hold you. We're not going to allow any of our listeners to sue you based on their financial information. There's one anomaly that came up in your research when you're working with kids that I wanted to ask you about, which is about competence. So children actually did seek out information about their own competence even when they did poorly. So why do you think that is?

Jane Risen: I don't have a good answer. You're right to say that this one's ... yeah.

Hal Weitzman: Maybe explain to us what happened and then-

Jane Risen: So we measured many different motivations in this study and almost all of them went in the same direction. The one that looked different was the dimension of competence. What I mean by look differently is that as we were talking about for all of these different motivations, the older kids in our sample were the ones that were more likely to avoid information. But when it came to competence, as kids got older, they were actually more and more likely to get the information rather than not get the information.

And we found this in two separate studies, so I don't think it's just a total fluke or total noise. I think it is a reliable effect. But I don't have a great answer yet for why it's different, why people want to know that they were the one who did bad on the test. But they don't want to know that they were the one who wasn't invited to the birthday party.

That's the kind of difference that we're seeing when it comes to something like how likable I am. The kids are showing more avoidance as they get older. But for competence, they were showing more information seeking as they got older. I think it could be partly about what's changeable. Hopefully maybe this means that lots of schools are doing a great job introducing growth language in terms of competence, so that people think getting feedback is actually going to just allow me to become better and more competent rather than needing to avoid it. But that's just a speculation.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Last time you were on the podcast, we talked about politics and polarization. Or we were talking about debating and how we can make more dialogue. But in this research, you link this childhood avoidance to political polarization among adults. Just tell us what that link is.

Jane Risen: Again, this is a more speculative, this isn't something we've studied yet. But one of the things that's I think interesting to us is one place that we see adults avoiding information, which we haven't talked about much, is around politics. What you think of in terms of these information silos that people are in. And so there's research in psychology for a long time on selective exposure, what I'm willing to expose myself to. And people, partisans are willing to expose themselves to information that favors their views and they tend to avoid information that counters their views.

And so you end up with adults in these kind of echo chambers where they're only hearing things that are said by people who share the same views as themselves. And we're not having nearly as much crosstalk as I think people often think is useful for a healthy democracy.

And because kids ... As we were talking about before, kids start curious about everything. You wouldn't expect kids to put themselves into echo chambers. But understanding the development of information avoidance and thinking about how we might be able to change the trajectory or maintain curiosity at times where we might otherwise start to become motivated to avoid information was the link thinking about this current problem we have where people are putting themselves into these echo chambers.

If we understood more about how we become information avoiders, could we create interventions or model better behavior? Another thing is how do kids learn to avoid information? This is a big question that we have. And one thing, they may be learning this from the people in their lives, from the adults in their lives, whether this is parents or teachers. And so one thing we could do is you think about how to model curiosity as adults. Especially when it is with people who have disagreeing points of views that might be very useful in maintaining the curiosity that kids naturally show, but seem to age out of it as they develop.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Now some of our listeners will be ... Well, I'm sure most of our listeners will be avoiding some kind of news. Which for them is bad, whether it's checking their grades or checking their retirement account. What do you think the lesson is from your research? Is it just descriptive or is there something we could be doing to make ourselves happier?

Jane Risen: Well, I think it's worth being thoughtful about what your goals are when you're thinking about which information to get or not. And another thing I will add on is that I think the timing matters a lot. So there may be information that is useful to have and you may not be able to handle it right now. But you know you need to get it at some point. And so sometimes it may not be thinking about ... Almost changing the question from whether or not I should get this information to when I can get this information may be useful.

So with the example with looking at the stock market, thinking about the advice is not to never look at your returns ever again. But it's to look less frequently than you might have been because it will make it easier to stay invested and not get freaked out because of a particular turn at a particular time.

I can think of an example for academics when you get reviews back on a paper. I'm too curious. I immediately need to know if it was accepted or not. That I have to look at right away. But regardless of whether it was sort of a revision, a rejection, whatever it is, to read through the reviews with the right mindset to be prepared to hear them, that's not an any moment of the day kind of a thing. I need to read those in the moment where I'm going to be prepared to receive this information in a way that's going to be useful and not in one that's going to just make me angry and upset. Because I know that it's information that is both useful and potentially upsetting.

Hal Weitzman: I'm thinking of that advice you get, don't look at your phone first thing in the morning.

Jane Risen: Yeah. So I think ... So maybe one piece of advice would just be to change the question a little bit in your mind. It's not just about whether you get information or not, but when you get information. And so trying to think about, especially if it's information that you're going to need to get at some point, when am I going to be most receptive to taking it in a way that's useful and not going to create all of these bad feelings and misdirected actions. Because now I just want to sell off all of my stocks and get out. And maybe that would be one way to sort of push us to do something that would be more aligned with our goals in the long term.

Hal Weitzman: Well, Jane Risen, thank you so much for coming back on the Chicago Booth Review Podcast. I'm glad that I'm no longer ignorant of your research here about willful ignorance and information avoidance. Thanks for coming back.

Jane Risen: Thanks for having me.

Hal Weitzman: That's it for this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, part of the University of Chicago Podcast Network. For more research, analysis and insights, visit our website at chicagobooth.edu/review. When you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter so you never miss the latest in business-focused academic research.

This episode was produced by Josh Stunkel. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and please do leave us a five-star review. Until next time, I'm Hal Weitzman. Thanks for listening.