Not Wanting to Know

Deliberate Ignorance, With Special Reference to Animal Welfare

A few years ago, I was excited on the day that course evaluations came out, 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.”

Another story: 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 the topic. I didn’t want to know all those details. (Still, it was a good date. Reader, I married her.)

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 these things.

1.

My own research finds that most people don’t want to know the date of their death. I also find that a lot of people don’t want know whether the person for whom they have romantic feelings reciprocates those feelings. (Why not? I don’t know; the evidence doesn’t tell us. Maybe they fear bad news. Maybe they are married, and think that good news would be dangerous.) (See Too Much Information, MIT Press, 2022.)

To get clear on the topic, we need to distinguish between two things: (1) wanting not to know and (2) not wanting to know.

I don’t want to know the number of hairs on the heads of every person in France, but I don’t 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 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.)

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.

Some of the data 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 don’t seek it out, well - wanting not to know, and not wanting to know, are not so different.

But if you want not to know, and do not merely not want to know, it might be really hard to get you to know. I really want not to know if the donut I just ate has a lot of calories.

2.

Let’s step back a bit. Why do people want to know? Why do they take steps to learn things? (Here’s a paper on that topic: https://affectivebrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/41562_2019_793_OnlinePDF_2.pdf)

The most obvious reason is that information is useful. It has instrumental value. I am writing on a laptop right now (are you surprised? did you want to know?), and I had to acquire a fair bit of information to learn how to use it.

It’s useful to know what the weather will be like today. If you are allergic to shrimp (as I am), it’s really useful to know whether the food that you are eating contains shrimp.

In short, the first reason to obtain information is that you can benefit from obtaining it. If you can’t benefit from obtaining it, you might not want to know. That’s why people often do not want to know. But it does not explain why people want not to know.

Here’s one reason: Sometimes ignorance is bliss, in the sense that if you learn something, things will go worse for you. A lawyer might want not to know if her client is guilty. A doctor might want not to know if his patient is a creep. A professor might want not to know his course evaluations, because if they are disappointing, he might be a bit sad or mad, and teach less well.

3.

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 your death might be upsetting (especially but only if it’s coming up soon). Knowing what your friends really think about you might make you a bit sad.

People often don’t like getting bad news, and if there is some probability of getting bad news, they might want not to know. There is plenty 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).

Information might be depressing. It might create anxiety. It might create guilt. (Some of my friends really do not like following the news.)

In short: People often want not to know things because of the anticipated negative hedonic impact of the information. People often avoid potentially or clearly 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. They are motivated not to believe it, because doing that would make them sad.)

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

Different people balance instrumental value and hedonic impact in different ways. Context matters. You might really want to know about your job performance, even if the news might not be so good, simply because you would like to improve; but you might be averse to getting bad news about your health, even if you could do something good with that news.

There is also evidence that different people have different inclinations here. Are you an information seeker or an information avoider? You might have a clear answer to that question.

Some people really want to know useful things, even if those things would make them sad or mad. Some people really do not want to know things that would make them sad or mad, even if those things are useful to know.

4.

You probably want to know plenty of 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 don’t. Sorry.)

In short, information may have “cognitive value.” There are plenty of things that people just 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 lot about basketball, or about behavioral economics, but not so much about other things.

5.

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?

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 (so: little or no instrumental value). They are not curious (so: little or no cognitive value). They do not think the information would make them happy (so: 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 just do not have any interest in it.

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. (There is a ton of evidence on that. For one bit, see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3938994)

6.

Is that puzzling? It 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. If people learn things about the mistreatment of animals, they might feel guilty or ashamed. They might have to change their behavior. They might have to stop eating meat. Thanksgiving might be turkey-free. They might think that they have to become activists, at least to some degree.

Indeed, we have evidence that people who do not want information about the suffering 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.” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3938994)

How can we overcome that information avoidance?