Partial ignorance: Strategies for coping with inconvenient information

Abstract

Willful ignorance – intentionally avoiding inconvenient information – allows individuals to act selfishly without spoiling their positive image. Yet, full avoidance is not always possible, especially in today's information-rich environments. We propose that when ignorance is not possible, individuals use more subtle information-processing strategies to achieve the same result. These partial ignorance strategies include limiting exposure to inconvenient information, seeking contradictory information, and interpreting information in self-serving ways to maintain a positive image while behaving selfishly. Therefore, to effectively promote prosociality, interventions should go beyond confronting individuals with inconvenient information. Instead, interventions should focus on mitigating the more subtle strategies individuals use. We present potentially promising interventions and raise open research questions that merit further exploration. Understanding these subtle information-processing strategies and developing interventions to tackle them is important to promote prosociality. • Willful ignorance helps people act selfishly without harming their image. • Full ignorance of inconvenient information is often not possible. • Instead, people use more subtle information processing strategies. • These enable selfish behavior while preserving a positive image. • More work is needed to develop interventions that mitigate these subtle strategies.

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