Willful Ignorance and Selfishness: Why People Avoid Knowing the Consequences of Their Actions

Understanding Willful Ignorance

Research shows that 40% of people do not want to know how their actions affect others. This “willful ignorance” reduces altruistic behavior and has harmful consequences in many areas of life.

Willful ignorance, also known as deliberate blindness, is when people choose to “look the other way” and ignore uncomfortable information.

Willful ignorance is a psychological state and behavioral practice of ignoring any information that contradicts an individual’s internal model of reality.

Examples of willful ignorance are common in everyday life. For instance, people may ignore facts about the origins of the products they buy, such as the exploitation of women, children, and ethnic minorities in factories in Asian and African countries that supply many well-known brands. Or, someone may enjoy eating meat but not want to think about how it is produced (through the cruel slaughter of animals in slaughterhouses).

• Rejecting data about the harmful effects of bad habits (like smoking or drinking alcohol) to avoid changing their lifestyle.
• Not wanting to know about climate change or even denying it exists.
• Believing in wild conspiracy theories and rejecting any facts that contradict them (for example, scientific evidence that the Earth is round, not flat).
• Avoiding information about corruption by politicians they support.
• Denying the unsavory actions of their country on the international stage out of patriotism.
• And so on.

A willfully ignorant person completely ignores facts they dislike.

Willful ignorance is closely related to confirmation bias and/or the avoidance of cognitive dissonance. Depending on the nature and strength of existing beliefs, it can manifest in different ways:

• Completely ignoring established facts and evidence if they do not match expectations.
• Denial and justification, often in the form of circular reasoning: “I can’t agree with this fact; it’s unreliable because I don’t like it and it contradicts my worldview.”

Willful Ignorance vs. Self-Deception

Deliberate blindness differs from self-deception, where people truly believe in false things. The term “willful ignorance” means that a person knows or understands the real facts but chooses to ignore or reject them.

It is often hard to judge whether someone is willfully ignorant or genuinely mistaken. The difference is subtle but important. Willful ignorance is sometimes called tactical stupidity. It is more adaptive—a cognitive strategy people use to improve their emotional well-being. Self-deception, on the other hand, is less subject to conscious control.

In the satirical sci-fi film Don’t Look Up (2021), people collectively reject scientists’ warnings that a comet will soon hit Earth and destroy civilization. Humanity splits into those who condemn “unfounded panic” and believe that mining the comet will create jobs, and those who deny the comet exists at all.

While willful ignorance and self-deception help people avoid unpleasant facts, in the long run, it is better to face reality than to avoid or deny it. Since a self-deceiving person believes in something untrue, they have fewer resources to correct their course when their mistaken beliefs lead them astray.

Scientific Research on Willful Ignorance

Willful ignorance is studied in various fields: psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, and political science. Scientists want to understand how common and harmful this “conscious unawareness” is, and why people resort to it.

Linh Vu, a master’s graduate from the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 22 scientific studies (56 different experiments with 6,531 participants) carried out in recent years, both in labs and on online platforms [1].

For example, one study found that 40% of people would rather not know how their actions affect others, often as a way to justify selfish behavior.

In this study, participants had to choose between a smaller reward ($5) and a larger one ($6). If they chose $5, an anonymous participant (or a charity) also received $5. If they chose the larger reward of $6, the other recipient got only $1.

One group of participants was informed about the consequences of their decision, while another group could choose whether or not to learn about them.

The “Moral Wiggle Room” Task

In the “Moral Wiggle Room” task by Dana et al. (2007), green numbers represent the decision-maker’s reward, and orange numbers represent payments to the anonymous recipient. Two possible scenarios—conflict and alignment—are equally likely when processing hidden information. In the conflict scenario, option A maximizes profit for oneself at the recipient’s expense. The alignment scenario shows a win-win situation where option A maximizes profit for both parties.

The results showed that when given the option, 40% of people preferred not to know the consequences of their actions. This willful ignorance correlated with less altruism: people were more generous when informed about the consequences of their choices compared to when they were allowed to remain ignorant.

Although most people, when fully informed about the consequences of their actions, are willing to do the right thing, this willingness is not always motivated by concern for others. Often, it is explained by the desire to maintain a good opinion of themselves.

Researchers suggested that many people act altruistically to preserve a positive self-image. Willful ignorance allows them to keep thinking well of themselves without having to act altruistically. Being righteous requires people to invest their time, money, and effort. Therefore, ignorance provides an easy way to justify selfishness.

According to Dr. Shaul Shalvi, professor of behavioral ethics at the University of Amsterdam and co-author of the study, the meta-analysis confirmed this. Participants who chose to learn about the consequences of their actions were more likely to act charitably than those who received information by default. This suggests that truly altruistic people prefer to be aware of the consequences of their actions.

The motivation of stakeholders and the desire to present a positive self-image are factors that contribute to altruistic behavior.

All studies included in this meta-analysis were conducted in laboratories in the US or Western Europe or on online platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. According to the researchers, future studies should focus on willful ignorance in more diverse settings and on finding ways to combat such behavior.