Choosing Not to Know

 Everybody Does It

We all occasionally decide that some information is not worth the effort needed to acquire it.  But do you ever deliberately fail to acquire relevant, valuable information?  For instance, imagine you meet a new person who is physically attractive. You want very much to develop a relationship.  You feel vague unease about a feature of their personality. However, your wish for connection over-rides your motivation to evaluate your hunch.  

Why We Avoid Information (Even When It Could Help Us)

Have you ever put off checking your bank balance, opening a scary-looking envelope, or asking a question because you weren't sure you wanted the answer? You're not alone — and you're not being irrational. Psychologists call this information avoidance: the habit of steering clear of facts that could actually help us, simply because getting those facts feels uncomfortable.

It's Not About Being Lazy or Uninformed

For a long time, people assumed that if someone didn't seek out important information, it was because they didn't know better or couldn't be bothered. But research tells a different story. Most of the time, we avoid information because learning it comes with a cost — emotional, mental, social, or practical.

Think about it: information that challenges what you believe, forces you to change your behavior, or might confirm your worst fear can feel genuinely threatening. In moments like that, not knowing can feel safer than knowing — even though, deep down, we usually sense that knowing would help.

Researchers have found that this kind of avoidance often works as a self-protective strategy. It buys us time before we have to deal with something upsetting, whether that's a health scare, money trouble, or a rocky relationship. When we're anxious or uncertain, avoiding information can be a way of managing that anxiety and holding onto hope a little longer — even if it's temporary.

You can see this play out in everyday life: people put off genetic testing because they're afraid of what it might reveal, avoid checking their finances because they're afraid of debt, tune out political news because they're emotionally worn out, or skip medical screenings because not knowing feels more bearable than a diagnosis. In every case, it's not a random choice — it's a kind of trade-off between the pain of finding out and the comfort of staying unaware.

Not All Avoidance Looks the Same

Psychologist Julia Nolte, whose research began at Cornell University before she moved to Tilburg University, has shown that this kind of avoidance isn't one single behavior — it changes depending on the situation, the type of information, and what's motivating the person at that moment.

Her work also draws an important distinction: sometimes people passively miss out on information simply because they never encounter it, but other times they actively choose not to learn something — even when it would be easy to find out and would clearly be useful. That second kind, the deliberate choice to stay in the dark, is what makes information avoidance so interesting.

Nolte's studies also found that people avoid information for many different reasons — to dodge emotional distress, sidestep a tough decision, save mental energy, protect a hopeful outlook, or avoid future regret. Interestingly, age doesn't predict this in a simple way. Older adults aren't automatically more likely to avoid information; it really depends on the specific situation and what matters most to them at the time.

Sometimes It's Not the Information — It's How It's Presented

Another interesting finding: people often don't want less information — they want it presented more simply. Research shows that people tend to make decisions based on the general "big picture" takeaway rather than a pile of precise numbers and details. So what looks like avoidance might actually just be a preference for a clear summary over an overwhelming wall of data. Give someone a short, meaningful version of the facts, and they may be perfectly willing to engage — even if they'd have avoided the same information buried in spreadsheets and statistics.

Avoidance Is Part of a Bigger Defense System

More recent research points out that avoiding information is just one tool in a larger toolkit people use to protect themselves from uncomfortable truths. If someone can't dodge the information itself, they might instead question whether the source is trustworthy, downplay how relevant it is to them, or dismiss what it implies. This matters because it means simply making information more available doesn't guarantee people will accept it — if the underlying urge to protect themselves is still there, they'll just find another way to push the information away.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

We live in a world overflowing with information — endless news, notifications, and algorithm-fed feeds all competing for our attention. Given that flood, being selective about what we pay attention to isn't just understandable, it's necessary. The real question isn't whether people avoid information anymore. It's which information they avoid, when, and why.

A Mix of Personality and Circumstance

Whether someone avoids information depends on both the moment they're in and who they are as a person.

In the moment, factors like how emotionally intense a situation is, how threatening it feels, how much uncertainty is involved, time pressure, mental overload, and social expectations can all push someone toward avoidance. Someone who eagerly checks their finances when things are going well might avoid the exact same information during a financial rough patch.

As a person, certain traits make some people more prone to avoidance across many areas of life — things like discomfort with uncertainty, anxiety, a strong need for quick closure, a tendency to sidestep emotions, optimism, confidence in one's own abilities, and general curiosity. These traits shape how threatening something feels and how someone chooses to cope with it.

Put simply: your circumstances decide when information starts to feel costly, and your personality shapes how you respond once it does.

What You Can Actually Do About It

Understanding why we avoid information is useful — but the real value comes in catching yourself doing it and making a better choice. Here are some practical takeaways:

Notice the difference between being busy and being avoidant. Ask yourself honestly: am I truly too busy to check this, or do I just not want to know the answer?

Weigh the cost of not knowing. A few minutes spent facing something today can prevent a much bigger problem down the road.

Not everything deserves your attention. It's fine — even healthy — to ignore clickbait, outrage-bait, and pointless social media arguments. But avoiding things that affect your health, money, relationships, or responsibilities is a different story, and much more costly.

Build a routine instead of waiting to "feel ready." Set a regular time each week to open bills, check your bank balance, or deal with medical results. A consistent habit reduces the emotional weight of these tasks and stops small problems from growing into big ones.

Swap fear for curiosity. Instead of dreading what information might reveal, ask what you might learn from it and what new options it opens up. Remember: information doesn't create problems — it just reveals ones that already exist, usually while there's still time to do something about them.

Don't mistake short-term relief for long-term well-being. Avoiding a problem might feel better right now, but it usually makes things harder later.

Make staying informed a habit, not a crisis response — check your finances regularly, follow reliable news in small doses, keep up with checkups, and ask questions when something's unclear.

Stick to trustworthy sources. When something feels confusing or overwhelming, lean on credible experts rather than rumors or sensational headlines. Quality matters more than quantity.

Talk it through with someone you trust. Processing difficult information with a friend, family member, or colleague can make it easier to handle and can offer perspective you might be missing on your own.

Accept that uncertainty is normal. Ignoring a hard truth doesn't make the uncertainty go away — but gathering more information, even incomplete information, usually helps you feel more in control.

Remember: information is a tool, not a verdict. Whether it's a diagnosis, a bank statement, or a performance review, its purpose is to help you understand where you stand and make a good decision — not to define or discourage you.

A simple daily check-in: before you put off learning something, ask yourself — Will this help my future? Will knowing help me make a better decision? Will waiting make things harder to fix? If the answer to any of these is yes, it's usually worth facing the information now rather than later.

 

References

Howell, J. L., & Shepperd, J. A. (2016). Establishing an information avoidance scale. Psychological Assessment, 28(12), 1695–1708.

Meese, W. B., Hua, J., & Howell, J. L. (2024). Information avoidance: An interchangeable strategy of self-protection. Social Science & Medicine, 354, 117065.

Nolte, J. (2023). The age of avoidance? The roles of context, cognition, and affect in adult age differences in decision avoidance (Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University).

Nolte, J., Deng, S. L., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2021). Age differences in media consumption and avoidance with respect to COVID-19. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 77(4), e76–e82.

Nolte, J., Deng, S. L., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2023). Information avoidance in consumer choice: Do avoidance tendencies and motives vary by age? Experimental Aging Research, 49(2), 112–129.

Nolte, J., Löckenhoff, C. E., & Reyna, V. F. (2022). The influence of verbatim versus gist formatting on younger and older adults' information acquisition and decision making. Psychology and Aging, 37(2), 197–209.

Sweeny, K., Melnyk, D., Miller, W., & Shepperd, J. A. (2010). Information avoidance: Who, what, when, and why. Review of General Psychology, 14(4), 340–353.