Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada.
Psychol Rev. 2017 Mar;124(2):179-196. doi: 10.1037/rev0000055.
Ignorance is generally pictured as an unwanted state of mind, and the act of willful ignorance may raise eyebrows. Yet people do not always want to know, demonstrating a lack of curiosity at odds with theories postulating a general need for certainty, ambiguity aversion, or the Bayesian principle of total evidence. We propose a regret theory of deliberate ignorance that covers both negative feelings that may arise from foreknowledge of negative events, such as death and divorce, and positive feelings of surprise and suspense that may arise from foreknowledge of positive events, such as knowing the sex of an unborn child. We conduct the first representative nationwide studies to estimate the prevalence and predictability of deliberate ignorance for a sample of 10 events. Its prevalence is high: Between 85% and 90% of people would not want to know about upcoming negative events, and 40% to 70% prefer to remain ignorant of positive events. Only 1% of participants consistently wanted to know. We also deduce and test several predictions from the regret theory: Individuals who prefer to remain ignorant are more risk averse and more frequently buy life and legal insurance. The theory also implies the time-to-event hypothesis, which states that for the regret-prone, deliberate ignorance is more likely the nearer the event approaches. We cross-validate these findings using 2 representative national quota samples in 2 European countries. In sum, we show that deliberate ignorance exists, is related to risk aversion, and can be explained as avoiding anticipatory regret. (PsycINFO Database Record
无知通常被描绘为一种不需要的心理状态，而故意无知的行为可能会引起人们的关注。然而，人们并不总是想知道，这表明他们缺乏好奇心，与假设人们普遍需要确定性、避免模棱两可或贝叶斯全证据原则的理论相矛盾。我们提出了一种故意无知的后悔理论，该理论涵盖了对负面事件（如死亡和离婚）的预知可能产生的负面情绪，以及对正面事件（如预知未出生孩子的性别）的预知可能产生的惊喜和悬念的正面情绪。我们进行了首次具有代表性的全国性研究，以估计 10 个事件中故意无知的普遍性和可预测性。研究结果显示，其普遍性很高：85%至 90%的人不想了解即将发生的负面事件，而 40%至 70%的人宁愿对正面事件保持无知。只有 1%的参与者始终表示希望了解。我们还从后悔理论中推导出并测试了几个预测：那些宁愿保持无知的人更厌恶风险，并且更频繁地购买人寿和法律保险。该理论还暗示了时间事件假说，即对于容易后悔的人来说，故意无知更可能发生在事件临近的时候。我们使用 2 个欧洲国家的 2 个具有代表性的全国配额样本交叉验证了这些发现。总之，我们表明故意无知是存在的，与风险厌恶有关，可以解释为避免预期的后悔。
