I'm in a hurry, I don't want to know! Strategic ignorance under time pressure

Abstract

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 use supplementary data to 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 due to conflict avoidance, rather than providing decision makers with a convenient excuse for not becoming informed. We discuss these observations in the context of a recent body of literature on the cognitive underpinnings of pro-social behavior and argue that they have significant implications for information-based approaches to public policy.

I’m in a hurry, I don't want to know! Strategic ignorance under time pressure.

“…The experimental instructions that explained the structure of the game and the procedural rules were shown on-screen. The full transcript of the experimental instructions (the German original and an English translation) are provided on OSF (Jarke-Neuert & Lohse, 2021). The experiment was framed in an abstract way, using neutral language and avoiding value-laden terms in the instructions.…”