I’m in a Hurry, I Don't Want to Know! Strategic Ignorance Under Time Pressure

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Authors

Information avoidance is common when privately beneficial choices have uncertain and potentially adverse effects on others. A dominant theory holds that such “strategic ignorance” allows decision makers to circumvent inner moral conflict while acting self-servingly. In extension of this theory, we hypothesize that time pressure elevates the prevalence of strategic ignorance. We conduct a laboratory experiment with resolvable payoff uncertainty to test this hypothesis. We find that time pressure indeed significantly increases the incidence of information avoidance. As a result, self-serving choices are more common than in a baseline without time pressure. We empirically explore several potential interpretations of this main finding. First, in a control condition, in which payoffs are fully transparent, time pressure has no direct effect on self-serving behavior. This speaks against a general tendency to act more self-servingly or fairly under time pressure. Second, a follow-up study shows that information avoidance under time pressure is attributable to conflict avoidance, rather than providing decision makers with a convenient excuse for not becoming informed.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: General
Volume151
Issue number11
Pages (from-to)2833-2845
Number of pages13
ISSN0096-3445
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23.06.2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The research for this article has been partially funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, cluster EXC 2037 “CLICCS: Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” (Project 390683824) and contributes to the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) of Universität Hamburg. The authors do not declare any conflict of interest. Study materials, experimental instructions, data, and data analysis files are published on the Open Science Framework (OSF) under DOI 10.17605/ OSF.IO/5X3DW or URL https://osf.io/5x3dw/

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association

    Research areas

  • Conflict avoidance, Information avoidance, Prosocial behavior, Strategic ignorance
  • Economics

DOI