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

A recent study found 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.

What Is Willful Ignorance?

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

• 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.
• Ignoring unsavory actions by their country on the international stage.
• And so on.

Willful ignorance is closely related to confirmation bias and/or the avoidance of cognitive dissonance.

Depending on the nature and strength of a person’s pre-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

Willful ignorance is different 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 tell whether someone is practicing willful ignorance or is 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 under 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 both 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. Someone who deceives themselves has 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. Researchers want to understand how widespread 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 preferred not to know how their actions would affect others. Often, this serves as an excuse for 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 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, by Dana et al. (2007), used green numbers to indicate the decision-maker’s reward and orange numbers for the anonymous recipient. Two possible scenarios—conflict and alignment—were equally likely when processing hidden information. In the conflict scenario, option A maximizes personal gain at the recipient’s expense. The alignment scenario shows a win-win, where option A maximizes profit for both sides.

The results showed that when given the option, 40% of people chose not to learn about the consequences of their actions. This willful ignorance correlated with less altruism: people were more generous when they were told 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 driven by the desire to maintain a positive self-image.

Researchers suggested that many people act altruistically to preserve their self-esteem. Willful ignorance allows them to keep a good opinion of themselves without having to act altruistically. Being righteous requires people to invest 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 the 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 maintain a positive self-image are factors that contribute to altruistic behavior.

All studies included in this meta-analysis were conducted in labs in the US or Western Europe, or on online platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk. The researchers believe that future studies should focus on willful ignorance in more diverse settings and look for ways to combat this behavior.