Information Avoidance

Abstract

Information avoidance, which the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary classifies under the defense mechanisms, is any behavior designed to prevent or delay the acquisition of available but potentially unwanted information. It ranges from declining a medical test, to not opening a bank statement when markets fall, to looking away from distressing news. The idea descends from Leon Festinger's selective-exposure hypothesis, which held that a person seeks information consonant with their beliefs and avoids information that would increase dissonance, and it has since been given behavioral-economic and decision-theoretic accounts. Modern work shows the behavior is often deliberate and strategic rather than a simple failure to obtain information: people weigh the expected feelings, demands, and uses of what they might learn, and frequently choose not to know. This article explains the motives that drive it and how researchers measure it.

Keywords: information avoidance, selective exposure, deliberate ignorance, ostrich effect

Information avoidance is the mind's refusal of knowledge it could easily have: the test result left uncollected, the feedback left unread, the topic deliberately kept at arm's length. It is not ignorance in the ordinary sense of simply not knowing, because the information is available and the person is aware it could be had; what distinguishes avoidance is the active, often effortful, step taken to keep it out (Sweeny et al., 2010). The concept began in social psychology with Festinger's claim that people manage the discomfort of conflicting beliefs by controlling what they expose themselves to (Festinger, 1957), and it has grown into a cross-disciplinary account of when and why a rational-seeming agent would decline free, useful information (Golman et al., 2017).

What Information Avoidance Is

Information avoidance is any behavior designed to prevent or delay the acquisition of available but potentially unwanted information (Sweeny et al., 2010). Each part of that definition does work. The information must be available: a person who cannot obtain a test result is merely uninformed, whereas a person who could obtain it but chooses not to is avoiding. The information must be potentially unwanted: avoidance is driven by what one expects learning to cost, not by indifference. And the behavior is a means to prevent or delay knowing, which ranges from the passive, such as not asking, to the active, such as physically leaving so a result cannot be delivered. The MeSH scope note captures the core as choosing not to obtain knowledge even if having the information could be to one's benefit.

That last clause marks what makes the behavior puzzling. In standard decision theory, free information can only help: it cannot make a well-specified choice worse, so a rational agent should never pay to avoid it. Information avoidance is the systematic violation of that principle, and explaining it means identifying what, beyond the decision at hand, a person is protecting. Table 1 sets out the main motives that the literature has isolated, following the organizing reviews of the field.

In the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary, information avoidance is filed as one of the defense mechanisms, the unconscious or semi-deliberate processes that protect the self against anxiety. The placement is apt for the hedonic cases, where avoidance shields mood much as denial or repression do, but it understates the strategic side of the behavior: a good deal of avoidance is a reasoned, conscious choice rather than an automatic defense (Hertwig & Engel, 2016). The demonstration below treats avoidance as that kind of choice, letting the reader weigh the expected feelings, demands, and usefulness of a piece of information and read out whether a person is likely to seek it or avoid it.

Weigh a piece of information and see whether it is sought or avoided

Treating avoidance as a reasoned choice, a person weighs three things about a piece of information: the unpleasant feelings learning it would bring, the demand it would place on them to act or to revise a belief, and its usefulness. Feelings and demand push toward keeping the information out; usefulness pulls toward seeking it. Set the three and watch the balance tip. Computed locally, not stored.

Information avoidance has to be kept apart from three neighbors. It is not ordinary ignorance, the mere absence of knowledge, because the avoider could have the information and declines it. It is not inattention, a failure of notice, because avoidance is directed at information the person knows exists. And it is not the same as forgetting or repression after the fact, because avoidance operates at the gate, before the information is ever taken in. These distinctions matter because they localize the behavior: the decisive moment is the choice whether to acquire, and that is where both the costs and the interventions lie. Figure 1 places that moment at the center of the behavior, with the three motives weighed at the gate that decides whether information is sought or avoided.

Why People Avoid Information

The oldest answer is Festinger's. His theory of cognitive dissonance held that inconsistent cognitions produce an uncomfortable tension the person is motivated to reduce, and one way to reduce it is to control the informational environment: to seek out what agrees with one's existing beliefs and decisions and to avoid what would contradict them (Festinger, 1957). This selective-exposure hypothesis made avoidance a corollary of a general drive for consistency. A large meta-analysis later confirmed that people do prefer belief-consonant information, with a moderate overall bias, but it also showed the effect is not automatic: the preference for congenial information is stronger when people are defending a position and weaker when they are motivated to be accurate (Hart et al., 2009). Avoidance, in other words, is regulated by what the person is trying to achieve.

The behavioral-economic tradition recast the behavior in terms of expected utility over beliefs themselves. If holding optimistic beliefs is pleasant and holding pessimistic ones is painful, then information that threatens an optimistic self-image carries a psychological cost that can outweigh its instrumental value, and a person may rationally pay to avoid it (Golman et al., 2017). The clearest field demonstration is the ostrich effect: investors monitor their portfolios more often when markets are rising and conspicuously less often when markets fall, checking their accounts just when the news is likely to be good and looking away when it is likely to be bad (Karlsson et al., 2009). The behavior tracks the expected hedonic valence of the news rather than any change in how useful monitoring would be, which is the signature of hedonically driven avoidance.

Watch monitoring track the expected news, not its usefulness

In the ostrich effect, investors check their portfolios more when markets are rising and look away when they fall — even though a falling market is exactly when monitoring would be most useful. Checking follows the expected pleasantness of the news. Set what the market is expected to do and read off how likely the person is to look. Illustrative, computed locally, not stored.

A separate driver is the way knowledge can obligate. Jennifer Howell and James Shepperd showed in a series of experiments that people avoid personal risk feedback more when learning the result would commit them to an undesirable course of action, isolating behavioral obligation as a distinct motive over and above the sheer unpleasantness of the news (Howell & Shepperd, 2012). Anticipated regret is another: Kate Sweeny and William Miller found that the expectation of regretting what one might learn predicts avoidance independently of the information's perceived costs and benefits, so that two people who agree on what a result would mean can still differ in whether they want it, according to how much regret each anticipates (Sweeny & Miller, 2012). These findings together explain why avoidance is so sensitive to framing: small changes in what a result seems to demand, or in how much regret it seems to promise, move the decision even when the facts are fixed.

The Reach of Deliberate Not-Knowing

Ralph Hertwig and Christoph Engel argued that deliberate ignorance deserves to be treated as a reasoned stance in its own right, not a cognitive failure. Their Homo ignorans framework distinguishes at least six functions that choosing not to know can serve, from emotion regulation and the preservation of surprise to fairness and strategic advantage, and it reframes many instances of avoidance as functional rather than defective (Hertwig & Engel, 2016). On this view, a person who declines to learn the sex of an unborn child, or refuses a predictive genetic test for an untreatable disease, is not malfunctioning but exercising a considered preference about what to carry in their head.

How common is such deliberate not-knowing? Gerd Gigerenzer and Rocio Garcia-Retamero put the question to representative samples in Germany and Spain, asking whether people would want to know about future negative events such as the timing and cause of their own death, and about positive ones such as the sex of an unborn baby. A large majority chose not to know the negative events, and a striking share declined the positive ones as well; the authors modeled the pattern as the joint product of regret aversion, the wish to avoid the anticipated regret of foreknowledge, and a preference for suspense, the enjoyment of not knowing how things will turn out (Gigerenzer & Garcia-Retamero, 2017). The result matters because it moves information avoidance from the clinic to the population: deliberately choosing not to know is not a quirk of the anxious few but a widespread, patterned feature of how ordinary people manage their own futures.

Worked Example

The dispositional tendency to avoid information in a given domain is measured by the Information Avoidance Scale (IAS) of Jennifer Howell and James Shepperd, an eight-item instrument in which a respondent rates their agreement with statements about wanting, or not wanting, a specific kind of information (Howell & Shepperd, 2016). Each item is answered on a seven-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), worded so that higher agreement indicates greater avoidance, and the eight responses are averaged to give a score from 1 to 7, with the scale midpoint of 4 separating net seeking from net avoidance.

Suppose a person completes the IAS about their personal genetic disease risk and answers the eight items 6, 7, 5, 6, 7, 4, 6, and 5. The sum is 6 + 7 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 4 + 6 + 5 = 46, and the mean is 46 ÷ 8 = 5.75. Because 5.75 lies well above the midpoint of 4, the score indicates strong avoidance: this person is, on balance, inclined to keep the information out. Now suppose a genetic counselor reframes the test as directly actionable, which chiefly moves the two items tied to the usefulness of knowing, raising neither belief nor mood items but shifting those two responses from 7 and 6 down to 3 and 2. The new sum is 46 − 7 − 6 + 3 + 2 = 38, and the mean falls to 38 ÷ 8 = 4.75. The score still sits above the midpoint, so the person remains a net avoider, but the 1.0-point drop shows how targeting the specific motive that makes knowing feel useless can move the disposition without touching the parts of it rooted in mood or belief. The demonstration below lets the reader set all eight responses and reads out the sum, the mean, and whether the profile falls on the seeking or the avoiding side of the scale.

Score the Information Avoidance Scale

The IAS asks a person to rate eight statements about a specific kind of information from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), each worded so that higher agreement means greater avoidance. The eight are averaged; the midpoint of 4 separates a net seeker from a net avoider. The opening profile is the worked example (mean 5.75). Press Reframe the test as actionable to move the two usefulness-tied items down and watch the mean fall to 4.75. Computed locally, not stored.

Key Researchers

Leon Festinger

(1919-1989). Social psychologist at Stanford; his theory of cognitive dissonance and its selective-exposure hypothesis — that people seek consonant and avoid dissonant information — is the theoretical root of modern information avoidance. Wikipedia

Gerd Gigerenzer

(living). Director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development; his representative-sample surveys showed that most people deliberately choose not to know future events, a pattern he modeled as regret aversion plus suspense. Wikipedia

Russell Golman

(living). Behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University; lead author of the economic review that integrated psychology, economics, and sociology and catalogued the strategies of active information avoidance. ORCID

Ralph Hertwig

(living). Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development; with Engel he recast deliberate not-knowing as a reasoned, functional choice, distinguishing several functions of deliberate ignorance. Wikipedia

George Loewenstein

(living). Behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University; co-author of the ostrich-effect field study and the economic review, and a central figure in the behavioral-economic account of information avoidance. ORCID

James A. Shepperd

(living). Social and health psychologist at the University of Florida; co-author of the field-defining review and senior author of the Information Avoidance Scale, studying self-protective avoidance of health feedback. Faculty page

Kate Sweeny

(living). Health and social psychologist at the University of California, Riverside; lead author of the review that formally defined information avoidance and of the work isolating anticipated regret as a predictor of it. ORCID

Discussion

Information avoidance is notable for having been explained, in turn, by nearly every tradition that has touched it. Festinger made it a corollary of the drive for cognitive consistency, a way to protect beliefs from contradiction (Festinger, 1957). The social-psychological literature that followed treated it as motivated and regulated, stronger under defense and weaker under accuracy goals (Hart et al., 2009). Behavioral economics recast it as a rational response to beliefs that themselves carry utility, so that avoiding bad news can be a considered purchase of a better mood rather than a lapse (Golman et al., 2017; Karlsson et al., 2009). And the deliberate-ignorance program reframed much of it as a functional stance, a reasoned choice about what is worth knowing (Hertwig & Engel, 2016).

What unites these accounts is the recognition that information has consequences beyond the decision it informs: it changes how one feels, what one is obligated to do, and what one must believe. Once those consequences are admitted into the ledger, declining free information stops looking irrational and starts looking like one more thing a person optimizes. The practical stakes are high, because the same mechanism that spares a person needless anxiety can also keep them from a diagnosis, a financial reckoning, or a hard truth they would be better off facing (Sweeny et al., 2010). Distinguishing protective from harmful avoidance, and intervening on the specific motive at work, is the applied problem the field now confronts.

Current Directions

The most comprehensive recent synthesis is the review by Jessica Foust and Jennifer Taber, which maps the antecedents and consequences of information avoidance across health, finance, and interpersonal domains and sets out the field's open questions (Foust & Taber, 2025). Three fronts are active. The first is measurement and specificity: because avoidance is domain-bound, work is moving from general dispositions toward instruments and designs that isolate which motive — mood, obligation, belief, or limited response — is operating in a given case, since each implies a different intervention. The second is the population view opened by representative-sample studies, which asks how deliberate not-knowing is distributed across cultures and life domains and how stable it is within a person over time (Gigerenzer & Garcia-Retamero, 2017). The third is applied: how to design the delivery of medical, genetic, and financial information so that it respects a considered preference not to know while not letting harmful avoidance go unchallenged, which turns the research finding that avoidance is motive-specific into a lever for practice. The central open question is whether the hedonic, strategic, and dissonance-based forms share a common mechanism or are distinct behaviors that happen to share an outcome.

Common Misconceptions

Information avoidance is just ignorance.

Ignorance is the mere absence of knowledge; avoidance is an active step taken to keep out information that is available and known to exist (Sweeny et al., 2010).

Avoiding information is always irrational.

When beliefs themselves carry utility, declining bad news can be a reasoned trade, and deliberate not-knowing can serve genuine functions such as preserving suspense or fairness (Golman et al., 2017; Hertwig & Engel, 2016).

Only anxious or poorly informed people avoid.

Representative surveys find that a majority of ordinary people choose not to know at least some future events, so avoidance is a widespread pattern rather than a trait of a troubled few (Gigerenzer & Garcia-Retamero, 2017).

Avoidance is driven only by unpleasant feelings.

Mood is one motive; people also avoid because knowing would obligate an unwanted action or force a change in belief, independent of how the news would feel (Howell & Shepperd, 2012).

Glossary

Anticipated regret.

The regret a person expects to feel about what they might learn; it predicts avoidance independently of the information's perceived costs and benefits.

Behavioral obligation.

The commitment to act that learning a result would impose; people avoid information more when knowing would obligate an undesirable behavior.

Cognitive dissonance.

The discomfort produced by holding inconsistent cognitions; Festinger's theory makes avoidance a way of reducing it.

Congeniality bias.

The tendency to prefer information that agrees with one's existing beliefs and decisions; the empirical core of selective exposure.

Defense mechanism.

A process that protects the self against anxiety; MeSH files information avoidance as one such mechanism.

Deliberate ignorance.

The conscious choice not to know something one could know; treated by the Homo ignorans framework as a reasoned, functional stance.

Hedonic motive.

The wish to protect current mood; avoidance driven by the expectation that learning would produce unpleasant feelings.

Homo ignorans.

Hertwig and Engel's term for the agent who deliberately chooses not to know, framing such choices as functional rather than defective.

Information Avoidance Scale.

An eight-item self-report instrument that measures the dispositional tendency to avoid a specific kind of information.

Information avoidance.

Any behavior designed to prevent or delay the acquisition of available but potentially unwanted information.

Ostrich effect.

The tendency to monitor information less when the news is likely to be bad, as when investors check portfolios less often in falling markets.

Regret aversion.

The motive to avoid the regret foreknowledge might bring; with a preference for suspense, it models why people decline to know future events.

Selective exposure.

The preferential seeking of belief-consonant information and avoidance of belief-dissonant information; Festinger's hypothesis and the forerunner of the field.

Strategic ignorance.

Deliberate not-knowing used for advantage — for example, to preserve plausible deniability or bargaining position.

Suspense.

The valued experience of not knowing how something will turn out; a reason people decline even positive foreknowledge.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is information avoidance?

It is any behavior designed to prevent or delay the acquisition of available but potentially unwanted information, from declining a medical test to not opening a statement when markets fall; it is an active choice rather than mere absence of knowledge (Sweeny et al., 2010).

How is information avoidance different from ignorance?

Ignorance is simply not having knowledge; avoidance is the active step a person takes to keep out information that is available and that they know they could obtain (Sweeny et al., 2010).

Why would anyone avoid free, useful information?

Because information has consequences beyond the decision it informs: it can make one feel bad, obligate an unwanted action, or force a change in belief, and when those costs outweigh the instrumental value a person may rationally decline it (Golman et al., 2017).

What is the ostrich effect?

It is the tendency to monitor information less when the news is likely to be bad; the canonical finding is that investors check their portfolios less often when markets are falling than when they are rising (Karlsson et al., 2009).

Is information avoidance common?

Yes. Representative surveys in Germany and Spain found that a large majority of people choose not to know future negative events, and many decline positive ones too, so avoidance is a widespread pattern rather than a rare quirk (Gigerenzer & Garcia-Retamero, 2017).

How is the tendency to avoid information measured?

With the Information Avoidance Scale, an eight-item self-report measure on which respondents rate their agreement with statements about wanting, or not wanting, a specific kind of information, averaged to a score from 1 to 7 (Howell & Shepperd, 2016).

Is avoiding information always a mistake?

No. Deliberate not-knowing can serve real functions, such as preserving suspense or fairness, and declining bad news can be a reasoned choice; the applied task is to tell protective avoidance apart from the kind that keeps a person from a truth they should face (Hertwig & Engel, 2016).

How does MeSH classify information avoidance?

The Medical Subject Headings vocabulary files Information Avoidance (D000087366) as one of the defense mechanisms, defining it as choosing not to obtain knowledge even if having the information could be to one's benefit (Sweeny et al., 2010).

References