People sometimes avoid information about the impact of their actions as an excuse to be selfish. Such "willful ignorance" reduces altruistic behavior and has detrimental effects in many consumer and organizational contexts. We report the first meta-analysis on willful ignorance, testing the robustness of its impact on altruistic behavior and examining its underlying motives. We analyze 33,603 decisions made by 6,531 participants in 56 different treatment effects, all employing variations of an experimental paradigm assessing willful ignorance. Meta-analytic results reveal that 40% of participants avoid easily obtainable information about the consequences of their actions on others, leading to a 15.6-percentage point decrease in altruistic behavior compared to when information is provided. We discuss the motives behind willful ignorance and provide evidence consistent with excuse-seeking behaviors to maintain a positive self-image. We investigate the moderators of willful ignorance and address the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of our findings on who engages in willful ignorance, as well as when and why. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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选择的无知：对故意无知的潜在动机及其后果的元分析回顾。


人们有时会以自私为借口，回避有关其行为影响的信息。这种“故意无知”会减少利他行为，并在许多消费者和组织环境中产生有害影响。我们报告了第一个关于故意无知的荟萃分析，测试了其对利他行为影响的稳健性并检验了其潜在动机。我们分析了 6,531 名参与者在 56 种不同的治疗效果中做出的 33,603 个决定，所有这些决定都采用了评估故意无知的实验范式的变体。荟萃分析结果显示，40% 的参与者避免轻易获得有关其行为对他人造成后果的信息，与提供信息时相比，导致利他行为减少 15.6 个百分点。我们讨论故意无知背后的动机，并提供与寻求借口行为一致的证据，以保持积极的自我形象。我们调查了故意无知的调节因素，并讨论了我们的研究结果对谁故意无知、何时以及为何进行的理论、方法和实践的影响。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。