News
The Truth - Or Not?
Picture the scene: you’re attending a regular medical checkup, fielding questions about your health and lifestyle, when your doctor tells you they can accurately estimate your life expectancy from your answers. Would you want to hear the truth, no matter how brutal it might be? Or would you prefer to live in ignorance?
If you belong to the latter category, you’re not alone. A new study in Management Science has found that many of us would rather avoid stressful or uncomfortable truths — even if they might benefit us.
Emily Ho from Fordham University and colleagues discovered that information avoidance is incredibly common: on average, participants indicated that they would definitely or probably not want to receive information 32% of the time.
Overall, these figures were fairly stable across domains: an average of 24% would prefer not to know if a friend hated a book given as a gift, for instance, whilst 29% would avoid finding out the impact stress had had on their long-term health. Even among those who were more likely to want to hear potentially troubling information, there was often at least one domain in which they opted to remain uninformed.
Participants’ likelihood of avoiding information wasn’t associated with their gender, income, age or education. However, it was related to particular personality traits: those higher in extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to new experiences tended to seek information more, while those with high neuroticism scores showed a higher likelihood of wanting to stay in the dark.
If you belong to the latter category, you’re not alone. A new study in Management Science has found that many of us would rather avoid stressful or uncomfortable truths — even if they might benefit us.
Emily Ho from Fordham University and colleagues discovered that information avoidance is incredibly common: on average, participants indicated that they would definitely or probably not want to receive information 32% of the time.
Overall, these figures were fairly stable across domains: an average of 24% would prefer not to know if a friend hated a book given as a gift, for instance, whilst 29% would avoid finding out the impact stress had had on their long-term health. Even among those who were more likely to want to hear potentially troubling information, there was often at least one domain in which they opted to remain uninformed.
Participants’ likelihood of avoiding information wasn’t associated with their gender, income, age or education. However, it was related to particular personality traits: those higher in extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to new experiences tended to seek information more, while those with high neuroticism scores showed a higher likelihood of wanting to stay in the dark.