Mengchen Hu - 2nd year PhD presentation

Supervisors: Jacob Orquin & Sebastian Gluth
Discussants: Ingo Kleindienst & Anne Pechel

Abstract
Information avoidance is often inferred from failures to acquire information, making it difficult to determine what choosing not to know reflects. We propose that process measures can complement behavioral outcomes by directly examining information acquisition decisions. Whereas a dominant account views information avoidance as a future-oriented strategy to justify or commit to subsequent choices, we test an alternative account: that information avoidance may also reflect a present-oriented response to conflict arising from difficult tradeoffs.

Across three studies, we examine conflict in dilemmas where participants must decide whether to acquire information before allocating money between themselves and another person. In Studies 1a and 1b, we introduce a mouse-tracking paradigm and show that larger trajectory deviations in a hidden-donation condition (relative to a hidden-payoff condition) predict lower rates of information acquisition, indicating that information avoidance is preceded by conflict. In Study 2, we relate conflict to social value orientation: when participants acquire information, greater conflict predicts less altruistic choices among prosocial individuals but more altruistic choices among individualistic individuals, suggesting that this conflict is related to individuals’ underlying preferences. In Study 3, participants who initially avoided information are subsequently exposed to it. Active information acquisition increases altruistic behavior relative to full information, whereas forced exposure does not, suggesting that information avoidance does not necessarily commit people to selfishness.

Together, these findings identify conflict as an alternative mechanism underlying information avoidance and suggest that avoidance serves not only strategic, future-oriented goals but also an immediate function of escaping difficult tradeoffs. The present research highlights the importance of examining the processes underlying information acquisition decisions rather than merely relying on behavioral outcomes.

Everyone is welcome!