Does ignorance love company? The social dynamics of information avoidance

Individuals often avoid information about the social consequences of their actions when these conflict with their self-interest, thereby undermining prosocial behavior. Previous research has shown that individual factors affect who avoids information and under what circumstances. However, people often observe others' actions, update their perceptions of norms accordingly, and may inform each other about the negative consequences of their behavior. Here, we investigated how social dynamics influence information avoidance beyond personal preferences across four studies ( N = 760). Our findings reveal that social norms surrounding information avoidance changed based on the prevalence of the behavior. In an interactive experiment, people also mimicked others' actions, although this did not lead to an overall change in information avoidance and prosocial behavior. Interestingly, social influence was type-dependent. Selfish individuals were more prone to social influence, whereas prosocial individuals remained more consistent with their principles. In a second study, the ability to inform others about the negative consequences of their actions increased awareness and prosocial choices. However, the possibility of information sharing also diminished active information seeking. While primarily a minority of prosocial ‘information spreaders’ shared information, other individuals were less inclined to actively inform themselves. Overall, our results suggest that social influence plays a nuanced role in strategic information avoidance. Personal preferences interact with who ‘follows the crowd’ and shares information, or shifts the burden of seeking it. These findings underscore the importance of considering social dynamics alongside individual factors when studying how people avoid the inconvenient truths behind their decisions. • Injunctive social norms on information avoidance vary depending on how common the behavior is. • Individuals react to social information depending on individual-level preferences. • Information sharing increases awareness and prosocial choices. • Information sharing crowds out own searches and leads to a volunteer's dilemma.