Lead Article: Deliberate Ignorance

Sometimes people want to know. Sometimes people do not want to know. Sometimes people want not to know. Deliberate ignorance, or information avoidance, is often fueled by a belief that the relevant information is not useful or would be affirmatively harmful. Alternatively, and much of the time, it is fueled by a belief that information would induce negative emotions, such as sadness, fear, despair, anger, guilt, or shame. In short, the costs of receiving information may exceed the benefits. The domain of animal welfare is a valuable case study, because it illustrates the phenomenon of deliberate ignorance so well, and because it offers lessons about why people do not want to know certain things, and about how deliberate ignorance might be overcome. Those lessons bear more generally on deliberate ignorance about preventable suffering and hardship.

A few years ago, I was excited on the day that course evaluations came out at my law school, and said so to a colleague. Course evaluations! A big day. My colleague’s response was deflating: “I never read my course evaluations. I haven’t read them in fifteen years.” I asked why. He answered: “Because they’ll probably make me sad, and mad at my students, and I’ll teach worse.”

On a first date a number of years ago, my date started to talk about the Holocaust. She knew a lot. I didn’t like that topic. I didn’t want to know all those details. (Still, it was a good date. Reader, I married her.)

When I worked under President Obama, we produced a proposed rule to require calorie labels at certain restaurants. There was a heated debate, within the government, about whether to apply the rule to movie theaters. The early consensus, which determined the content of our proposed rule, was that we should not. We lacked the data, or so the majority believed. I was on the losing side. I thought that calorie labels would have significant health benefits and that we had sufficient data. And while I lost the internal debate, I did succeed in adding, for public comment, a request for evidence and views on whether to apply our proposed rule to movie theaters. As a technical matter, that request preserved our ability to do exactly that at the final stage.

When it came time to issue the final rule, the consensus flipped. As a result of comments from researchers, we had the evidence, or so we thought. We would require calorie labels at movie theaters. I was thrilled and sent a celebratory note to a colleague in government. She responded with three words: “Cass ruined popcorn.”

Back to the Holocaust: One of the most illuminating books on the period is They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer. In the 1950s, Mayer, an American, traveled to Germany to speak to former Nazis – not leaders, but ordinary people who had been swept up in events. He befriended ten people from various walks of life. One question was whether they knew that Jews had been killed in unthinkable numbers. Mayer writes, “my friends really didn’t know. They didn’t know because they didn’t want to know; but they didn’t know” (Mayer, 2025).

Popcorn can be ruined in many ways. People do not like it when their popcorn is ruined. Aware of that point, Nietzsche referred, in his characteristically over-the-top fashion, to “a suddenly erupting decision in favor of Ignorance, of exclusion, a shutting of one’s windows, an internal No to this or that, a refusal to let things approach, a kind of state of defense against much that is knowable, a satisfaction with the dark, with the limiting horizon, a Yea and Amen to ignorance.” (Nietzsche, 1883). What Nietzsche captures is that not knowing can be an exercise of freedom, something that is energetic and joyful. “Yea and Amen to ignorance.” This is a kind of “No he said no no,” inverting Molly Bloom’s words in Joyce’s Ulysses (“his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes”), declaring: No apples from the Tree of Knowledge.

In psychology and economics, there is a great deal of empirical work on the topic of deliberate ignorance, or information avoidance (Golman et al., 2017; Sunstein, 2022; Hertwig, 2022). We do have to be careful here. The idea of “deliberate” ignorance, or of “information avoidance,” suggests something like a conscious, reflective, fully aware choice not to know something. Undoubtedly that phenomenon is pervasive, as in the case of my colleague’s refusal to read his course evaluations. But sometimes people avoid information in a more automatic or intuitive way; it is a matter of selective attention, motivated of course, but not entirely reflective. The difference will matter for some purposes, but I use the relevant terms to include both phenomena.

Consider some examples. Would you like to know the year of your death? Whether you will get Alzheimer’s Disease? What your friends and family really think of you? The global temperature in 2200? The number of calories in all of your meals next year?

A lot of people do not want to know about any of these things (Golman et al., 2017; Sunstein, 2022; Ullmann-Margalit, 2018; Thunstrom et al., 2016; Hertwig & Engel, 2016). My own research (Sunstein, 2022) finds that a strong majority of people (about 73 percent) do not want to know the date of their death. About half of people (47 percent) do not want to know if they will ever get Alzheimer’s disease. Consistent with the ruination-of-popcorn thesis, I find that most people (about 57 percent) do not want to know the calories in their meals. I also find that a lot of people (about 43 percent) do not want to know whether the person for whom they have romantic feelings reciprocates those feelings. (Why not? I do not know; the evidence does not tell us. Perhaps they fear bad news. Perhaps they are married, and think that good news would be dangerous.)

To get clear on the topic on the topic of deliberate ignorance, we need to distinguish between two things: (1) wanting not to know and (2) not wanting to know (Ullmann-Maraglit, 2018). I do not want to know how to play cricket, but I do not want not to know that. I do not want to know the number of hairs on the heads of every person in France, but I do not want not to know that. You might not want to know about the fuel economy of motor vehicles, because you are not particularly interested. You might also want not to know about the fuel economy of the world’s motor vehicles. (Why not? I have no idea. Wanting not to know about that sounds silly to me; but still, you might want not to know about that.)

Consider this table:

When people do not want to know, but also do not want not to know, the reason is simple: They lack interest. But there is another possibility. They may not want to know, and for that very reason, they may want not to know. That might seem puzzling, but it can happen. People might be aware of their limited mental bandwidth or the risk of distraction. They might think: If I know that, I will have to think about it, and I do not want to think about it. As Edna Ullmann-Margalit puts it, “We may wish to protect ourselves from cluttering our mind and our memory; we may wish to preserve our faculties of creativity and imagination” (Ullmann-Maraglit, 2018).

But there are more fundamental and deeper reasons to want not to know. Ullmann-Margalit adds that “we may wish to avoid excessive cost or unnecessary involvements; we may wish to remain impartial, or to retain an element of surprise in our lives” (Ullmann-Maraglit, 2018). You might not want to know whether your favorite sports team will win tomorrow, and you might also want not to know that, because knowing that would spoil the surprise, and the fun, of watching the game. There are many other things that you might want not to know. “It is possible that you do not want to know precisely what your spouse is up to when you are away—and many of us do not want to know the details of how prisoners are treated in Singapore.” (Ullmann-Maraglit, 2018).

Some research on deliberate ignorance and information avoidance collapses the distinction between wanting not to know and not wanting to know, but for many purposes at least, the distinction is not all that important. If you want to know why people have no interest in obtaining information, and do not seek it out, wanting not to know, and not wanting to know, are not so different. But the dynamics are self-evidently different, and the two present contrasting challenges. Nietzsche’s focus was on wanting not to know. If you want not to know, and do not merely not want to know, it might be especially difficult to get you to know. I really want not to know if the donut I just ate has a lot of calories. (Why ruin donuts?)

Let us step back a bit. Why do people want to know? (Sharot & Sunstein, 2020). Why do they take steps to learn things? Here is a simple account. People consider (1) the instrumental value of information; (2) the hedonic value of information; and (3) the cognitive value of information (Sharot & Sunstein, 2020). They make a judgment, perhaps rapid and intuitive or perhaps slower and more deliberate, about how to integrate the three values. Different people tend to give different weight to the three values, and the weight they give may be relatively steady across contexts. Information avoiders, as we might call them, frequently give weight to (2) and understand it as a reason for deliberate ignorance, on the ground that relevant news might be distressing and hence ruin popcorn..

It is important to distinguish here between information that people might seek or avoid because it bears on their own welfare and information that people might seek or avoid because it bears on the welfare of others. People might not want health-related information because it might frighten them. By contrast, they might not want information about the effects of their consumption choices on (say) relevant workers because it might make them feel ashamed. (Das ist schwer, Herr Professor. Das ist kolossal schwer.)

The most obvious reason to seek information is that it has instrumental value. As Locke put it, “He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss.” (Locke, 1690). It is useful to know what the weather will be like today. It is generally useful for professors to know about their course evaluations, so that they can teach better in the future. It is generally useful to know how to get to the grocery store (or the hospital). If you are allergic to shrimp (as I am), it is exceedingly useful to know whether the food that you are eating contains shrimp. It is increasingly useful to know how to interact with AI. In short, and per Locke, the first and simplest reason to obtain information is that one can make better decisions as a result. If one cannot benefit, in that sense, from obtaining information, one might not want to know. That is why people often do not want to know. But it does not explain why people want not to know.

Here is one reason, connected with the utility or nonutility of information: Sometimes ignorance is bliss in the particular sense that if one learns something, things will go worse. We might tie our hands so that we will not and cannot know. Just as Ulysses tried to rule certain options off-limits, so we might rule certain information out-of-bounds (Ullmann-Margalit, 2018). A lawyer might want not to know if her client is guilty; if she does, she might do her job less well. A surgeon might want not to know if his patient is a creep; if he does, he might not be as good on the operating table. A professor might want not to know his course evaluations, because if they are disappointing, he might be upset or angry, and teach less well. In some cases, people know that if they receive information, their performance will be impaired.

Albert Hirschmann writes of the “hiding hand,” which deprives people of access to information about how difficult it will be for them to achieve their goals (Hirschmann, 2016). The hiding hand is beneficent, because people find ways to succeed in completing projects on which they would not even have embarked, if only they knew how difficult it would be. And recall that Athena, the Goddess of Justice, is blindfolded. There is a lot that she is not supposed to know.

Note the three core ideas here. 1) The unfeeling groan for their own pain. 2) The tender groan “for another’s pain.” 3) In both cases, “thought would destroy their paradise.” In other words, people might want to know something, or might not want to know something, because of how it will make them feel.

Knowing the date of one’s death might be upsetting (especially but not only if it is coming up soon). Knowing what your friends really think about you might make you a bit sad. People often do not like getting bad news, and if there is some probability of getting bad news, they might want not to know. There is a great deal of evidence that people do not want to know the harmful effects of their own actions, because they hope to maintain a favorable self-image, even if what they are doing is quite selfish (or worse) (Chance et al., 2011; Piazza & Loughnan, 2016).

Information might be depressing. It might create anxiety. It might create guilt (Rothberger, 2014). In short: people often want not to know things because of the anticipated negative hedonic impact of the information. People avoid bad news, in their personal lives or in the world, for that reason. That is also one reason that people often do not believe bad news when they get it (Sunstein et al., 2017). They are motivated not to believe it, because it would make them sad. Information avoidance and motivated belief formation are similar phenomena; beliefs carry utility, just as information does.

Note that the instrumental value of information might be positive even though the hedonic impact might be negative. It is useful to know that one has skin cancer, even if it is not a much fun to learn that one has skin cancer. A lot of useful information does not produce laughter and joy.

Different people balance instrumental value and hedonic impact in different ways, and there are robust patterns within individuals (Vellani et al., 2024; Dezza et al., 2022; Kelly & Sharot, 2021). There is clear evidence that different people have different inclinations here. Are you an information seeker or an information avoider, in general? You might have a clear answer to that question. Or you might be an information seeker in some large domains (sports? politics?) but an information avoider in other large domains (economics? fishing?).

Some people much want to know useful things, even if those things would make them sad or mad. They would pay a great deal, in terms of time or money, to learn those things. Perhaps what they learn would save them money. Perhaps what they learn would save their life. Perhaps it would save the lives of others. Their interest in what is useful is much greater than their concern about the hedonic effects of what they might learn. Some people really do not want to know things that would make them sad or mad, even if those things are useful to know.

In addition, context may well matter. One might much want to know about one’s job performance, even if the news might not be so good, simply because one would like to improve. But one might be averse to getting bad news about one’s health, even if one could do something good with that news.

All this misses something. You probably want to know many things that do not have instrumental value and that are unlikely to make you happy or sad. Do you want to know if Shakespeare really wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays? (I do.) Do you want to know whether and in what sense dogs are descended from wolves? (I do, very much.) Do you want to know whether there is life on other planets? (I say yes, for sure.) Do you want to know advanced calculus? (I do not. Sorry.)

In short, information may have “cognitive value” (Sharot & Sunstein, 2020). There are numerous things that people simply want to know, even if they cannot do anything with the information, and even if the information will not have any emotional impact. Some people are intensely curious and see the world as full of puzzles that need to be solved, or of fascinating material that needs to be known. Other people are not particularly curious or are highly selective in their curiosity. They might want to know a great deal about basketball, or about behavioral economics, but not so much about other things. Here too, the patterns seem to be relatively robust across persons (Kelly & Sharot, 2021).

People may avoid information about bad or horrible things around them, or about bad or horrible things whose existence they help make possible, even if in small ways. People might display deliberate ignorance of cruelty or of atrocities. There is a great deal to learn here. We might be speaking of consumer behavior; we might be speaking of investments. I focus here on nonhuman animals, in part because the mistreatment and cruelty, in that domain, seem to me of extraordinary importance, but also and equally fundamentally as an illustration of a large and insufficiently explored continent.

Tens of millions of animals are bred, raised, and killed every year for fur. Many of them live in horrific conditions, spending their entire lives in little wire cages and facing extremes of heat and cold (Sebo, 2022). Have you seen a deer being shot to death? Have you seen a video of a deer being shot to death? Would you like to see such a video?

Do you want to know about the lives of turkeys, when they are raised for food? Do you want to know what it is like for a deer to be hunted and shot? Do you want to know about the lives of pigs? Would you like to spend a few days learning all about factory farming? If I offered to write a few paragraphs, or a book chapter, on animals used in scientific experiments, would you be eager to read those paragraphs or that chapter? What about an account of the lives of race horses? Greyhounds? Puppies who spend a lot of time in crates? Would you feel assaulted to receive such an account?

Many people do not want to know about any of these things. Note the formulation: These are things that many people do not want to know. They do not think that they could benefit from the relevant information (and hence they see little or no instrumental value). They are not curious (and hence they see little or no cognitive value). They do not think the information would make them happy (and hence they see little or no hedonic value). Many people do not seek out information about the treatment of nonhuman animals, or about what their lives are like. They do not affirmatively avoid that information. They simply do not have any interest in it.

In addition, many people want not to know about any of these things. They do not merely decline to seek out the relevant information; they do or would take steps to avoid it. They block their ears; they avert their eyes. (Or they would if that were necessary.) Many nonhuman animals are suffering for this reason: Countless human beings do not want to know that those animals are suffering, and countless human beings want not to know that they are suffering (Epperson & Gerster, 2024).

Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence to support that claim, and it is growing over time (Rothberger, 2014; Gaspar et al., 2015; Kadel et al., 2014). My coauthors and I found that when buying meat, the majority of people, in eleven nations, wanted to avoid “information about how the animals have been raised and slaughtered” (Reisch et al., 2021). Another study found widespread deliberate ignorance with respect to the negative consequences of meat consumption (Bell, 2023). Strikingly, it has been found that those who eat beef avoid information about the environmental effects of cattle (but not the health effects of pork), and that those who eat pork avoid information about the health effects of pork (but not the environmental effects of cattle) (Droz et al., 2025; Bolker & Gruner, 2024).

A smaller survey of people in Oklahoma finds that one-third of respondents state that they want not to know about pork production (E. Bell et al., 2017). About one-third chose to see a blank screen instead of a picture of how pregnant hogs are housed. One reason for the choice was avoidance of guilt. People who eat meat have been found to engage in strategic ignorance of relevant facts about nonhuman animals; they are simply less likely to want to know (Leach et al., 2022).

Are these results puzzling? They ought not to be. Just as I did not want to hear about the Holocaust, back on that first date, many people do not want information that could or would make them distressed or sad, even crushingly sad. It’s not only a matter of sadness, of course. It is also a matter of shame or guilt. We have evidence that many people agree with this statement: “I think information about pig farming could make me sad or angry.” (Pietzmeier & Mergenthaler, 2024). Many people agree with this statement as well: “I think information about pig farming could put me under emotional strain” (Pietzmeier & Mergenthaler, 2024). Peitzmeier and Mergenthaler find that people avoid the relevant information in order to avoid such negative emotions as guilt or shame (Pietzmeier & Mergenthaler, 2024).

If people learn things about the mistreatment of animals, they might also have to change their behavior. They might have to consider whether to stop eating meat. Thanksgiving might be turkey-free. They might think that they have to become activists, at least to some degree. In one study, a majority of German consumers agreed with this statement: “I think information about pig farming could make feel forced to give up meat products.” (Pietzmeier & Mergenthaler, 2024). In the same study, a strong majority agreed with this statement as well: “I think information about pig farming could force me to change my consumption or purchasing behavior.” (Pietzmeier & Mergenthaler, 2024). An association has been found between eating meat and denying both moral status and mind to animals that are raised for meat (Longham et al., 2010). “People may escape the conflict between enjoying meat and concern for animal welfare by perceiving animals as unworthy and unfeeling.” (Longham et al., 2010).

Intriguingly, we also have evidence that people who do not want information about the suffering of animals are most affected by that information, if they get it. “We find that willful ignorance about farming practices increases consumption of meat from intensive farming, both in the laboratory and at university canteens. Individuals who prefer to avoid information are particularly responsive to it” (Epperson & Gerster, 2024).

How can we overcome that information avoidance (Lin-Schilstra & Fischer, 2020)? Would learning about the suffering of animals have instrumental value? For some people, the likely answer is: Certainly not. Why would it be useful? Many people might think: Nothing good can come of knowing about that. Of course that thought is selfish. But it is emphatically human. If you learn about the suffering of others, human or otherwise, you might think that there is not much that you can do. Life is short. Why be miserable? That is a point about hedonic value, and it seems fundamental.

Of course it is also true that some people are intensely curious about the treatment of animals. They like learning about it, because they want to know about the world, and perhaps particularly that feature of it. They might be keenly eager to learn. But not everyone is like that, not close. They might prefer to learn about any number of other things — basketball, movies, politics, history.

An important study finds that information about the suffering of nonhuman animals can affect behavior even for people most averse to getting that information: “At university canteens, information avoiders,” informed against their wishes, “reduce their meat consumption by around 30 percentage points in the first days after the experiment” (Lin-Schilstra & Fischer, 2020). In general, watching a “video on intensive farming reduces the propensity to choose a voucher for a meal with meat by 16 percentage points.” The upshot is that “avoidance behavior does not merely reflect a desire to circumvent unpleasant information that is irrelevant for decisionmaking. Instead, information avoiders alter their consumption choices upon acquiring it. This finding shows that information avoidance is consequential for decision-making in our field context” (Lin-Schilstra & Fischer, 2020).

The main reason for the behavioral change seems to be the strongly negative affective reaction of information avoiders to information about animal welfare. Their strong negative reaction helps explain both why they are information avoiders in the first place and why they are highly responsive to that information once they get it. Thus: “When information avoiders are exposed to information about the living conditions of pigs in intensive farming, they reduce their meat consumption. Information avoiders are not only responsive to information, they react much more strongly to it than information seekers, which underlines the strategic nature of willful ignorance” (Lin-Schilstra & Fischer, 2020).

How might deliberate ignorance be overcome? In the context of health, a large part of the answer is straightforward: (1) Increase the perceived instrumental value of information and (2) decrease the perceived hedonic cost (or turn it into a benefit). Suppose, for example, that you do not want to get an annual checkup, even though you really should go get one. If you learn that you might end up feeling much better, in light of what your doctor can do for you, you might feel hopeful rather than scared. And if you learn that if you do not go, you might be ignoring a real problem, you might be motivated to make an appointment, even though you might be kicking and screaming. (Who likes bad news?)

These are points about the instrumental value of health care. Now turn to the hedonic impact. If you like your doctor, and see appointments as an opportunity rather than a threat, the thought of going might be fine, or even fun, rather than a chore or a burden. True, a medical appointment is unlikely to a delight, but the hedonic effect of anticipating it, and of experiencing it, can be okay or better.

Now turn in this light to animal welfare (Peitzmeier & Mergenthaler, 2024). Suppose you think that if you learn about how animals are treated, there is some chance that you will change your eating habits. That might be a terrible prospect, in instrumental terms. But perhaps you might learn, or anticipate, that the new habits will be healthier habits — and easy to adopt — and also a kind of adventure. Perhaps those habits will help people to lose weight; perhaps they will reduce the risk of heart disease. People might think they will live longer. They might think that a meat-free diet will be easy, because meat-free foods are readily available. People might also think that they will like themselves a bit better, because they will be acting in accordance with your moral convictions. (Note the behavioral science ideas here: Make change easy; make change fun; make change attractive (Sunstein, 2020)) Food tastes are also shifting and endogenous rather than fixed and rigid. Those who stop eating meat, and do so with initial trepidation, might well end up liking their new meals a great deal.

I make these points to emphasize the instrumental value of animal-related information, turning a negative (“my diet will be terrible”) into a positive (“new and different meals will be interesting and great”). But one can easily see them as emphasizing hedonic effects as well. To be sure, many people do not find it a lot of fun to read about cruelty and suffering. To many people, that kind of reading can be highly aversive. Consider this remark: “Consumers use information avoidance as a strategy to reduce emotional discomfort caused by moral contradictions. Therefore images, formulations or information content that tend to be seen as emotionally charged regarding animals should not be used for public relations work” (Peitzmeier & Mergenthaler, 2024).

Suppose that instead you are reading and learning about the capacities of animals - and what they enjoy, what they love, and they are capable of. You might like learning those things (Webb, 2025). This is a point about cognitive value. Curiosity might save the cat (Horn et al., 2024).

The topic of deliberate ignorance is closely related to the topic of belief change (Sharot et al., 2022). You might believe that climate change is not a serious problem in part because the best evidence, you think, is consistent with that conclusion. But you might believe that climate change is not a serious problem in part because you like believing that.

People often have the beliefs that they enjoy having; beliefs carry utility (Loewenstein & Molnar, 2018; Molnar & Loewenstein, 2022). Motivated reasoning is easy to understand in that light. It is pleasant to believe that you are healthy, even if you really are not. It is pleasant to believe that your economic situation is pretty good and likely to get better, whatever the facts. It is not a lot of fun to believe that one is selfish or unkind. It is not a lot of fun to think that one’s own consumption patterns are contributing, even in small ways, to cruelty to and suffering of living creatures.

All this means that when people change their beliefs, it is sometimes because the new belief has instrumental value (smoking really isn’t good for you, and avoiding a lot of sugar might be smart), and sometimes because the new belief has hedonic value (it’s fun to think that your favorite candidate will be elected, and that the person you like is starting to like you back).

When people come to care about animal welfare, it is usually, of course, because they think, or learn, that it is the right thing to do. But when they come to care about animal welfare, it might be partly because they like caring about animal welfare, because they want to be the sort of person who does that. There are much broader implications here about how to respond to deliberate ignorance in the context of choices that people might consider, on reflection, to be harmful to self or to others, or to be morally problematic.

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