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    Don't Bring Me Down: Probing Why People Tune Out Bad News
    Research & Ideas
    Don't Bring Me Down: Probing Why People Tune Out Bad News
    15 Sep 2021Research & Ideas

    Don't Bring Me Down: Probing Why People Tune Out Bad News

    by Kristen Senz
    15 Sep 2021| by Kristen Senz
    People often go out of their way to avoid unpleasant information, but not always for the reasons you might expect. Research by Christine Exley and colleagues.
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    No one wants to hear that their car exhaust is hurting the planet, or that their jeans were made in a sweatshop, or that their doughnut might give them diabetes one day. In fact, people often go to great lengths to avoid information that makes them feel bad.

    Research has suggested that people tune out negative information so they can plead ignorance and continue harmful behavior. Indeed, it may seem like people are purposely avoiding information to create an “excuse” that frees them from the accountability of their own decisions.

    "A surprisingly large degree of information avoidance doesn't appear to be related to excuse-driven motives.

    A new study confirms that individuals often avoid information to make themselves feel better about the decisions they make. But the results also suggest that a variety of other factors can influence whether and how much we choose to become informed.

    “We find that, yes, people appear to purposely avoid information about how their decisions affect others. Specifically, they avoid information when it may help them to feel better about making selfish decisions, or decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of others,” says Christine Exley, an associate professor at Harvard Business School. “But we also find that a surprisingly large degree of information avoidance doesn't appear to be related to such excuse-driven motives.”

    By replicating past experiments that sought to understand decision-making dynamics, and introducing new study versions, Exley and Judd Kessler, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, took a new approach to exploring reasons people avoid information.

    Separating excuses from other motives

    The research, detailed in the working paper, Information Avoidance and Image Concerns, involved recruiting 4,626 people to complete an experiment. In all treatments, study participants chose between two options, A and B. In the “classic” treatment that replicated prior work, the participants knew they’d earn more by choosing A, but they didn’t know whether A or B would benefit some other participant more. They could avoid information and choose A or B directly, or they could learn which is better for the other participant before choosing.

    The researchers found that individuals frequently avoided information and chose A, the selfish option. This is consistent with individuals purposely avoiding information as an “excuse” that helps them to feel better about selfish decisions, Exley says.

    "Subtle changes to how you make information available can have a substantial impact."

    In Exley and Kessler’s new version of the experiment, participants’ decisions influenced payoffs for two other participants but not themselves. There was no motive to avoid information as an excuse to make selfish decisions. Yet, surprisingly, the researchers again found many participants avoided information. These results made clear that much of the information avoidance they uncovered in this new version of the experiment was not related to excuse-driven motives. Rather, individuals frequently avoided information for other reasons, such as inattention and laziness.

    Passive versus active choice

    Studies in behavioral economics and choice architecture have shown that people are less likely to avoid information when they are forced to actively choose whether to learn or not. Exley and Kessler replicate this finding as well. When individuals were required to actively choose whether to avoid information, they found that participants were less likely to avoid information.

    “Subtle changes to how you make information available can have a substantial impact on whether people choose to acquire that information,” Exley says.

    Advancing research on information avoidance

    Exley and Kessler’s research explores the extent to which individuals avoid information as an excuse, and how choice architecture can entice people to pay attention to relevant information and act more conscientiously.

    Through experimentation, Exley and Kessler’s recent research confirms that information avoidance occurs for a variety of reasons and brings together previously separate schools of thought known as “motivated reasoning,” which deals with avoidance as a way to form excuses for other behavior, and “rational inattention,” which is the idea that people simply can’t realistically pay attention to everything.

    Exley says bridging these ideas is a step toward a more complete understanding of decision-making and choice architecture.

    “Given the abundance of information today, understanding what motivates individuals to acquire and to avoid information remains an important area for future work,” says Exley.

    About the Author

    Kristen Senz is the growth editor of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
    [Image: mrPliskin]

    What's your strategy for sharing unpleasant information?

    Share your thoughts in the comments below.

    Post A Comment
    In order to be published, comments must be on-topic and civil in tone, with no name calling or personal attacks. Your comment may be edited for clarity and length.
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    Christine L. Exley
    Christine L. Exley
    Marvin Bower Associate Professor
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