🏜️ How We Learn to Bury Our Heads in the Sand
New research uncovers the early origins of strategic information avoidance
As children, we are natural-born learners who curiously absorb the world around us. So when exactly do we develop a tendency to start covering our eyes and avoiding useful information that might hurt us? How do we learn to avoid bank balances, medical diagnoses, and calorie counts just in case they tell us something we don’t want to hear?
A new study explores how and when children begin to practice “information avoidance”—the decision to deliberately not learn something, even when the information is free and useful. The findings reveal that this tendency emerges in elementary school and becomes stronger with age, especially in situations involving emotions, self-image, and personal gain.
The results offer a developmental glimpse into the origins of strategic ignorance—a behavior that shapes everyday decision-making in adulthood.
🧑🧒 The childhood origins of strategic ignorance
In a series of experiments involving over 300 American children aged 5 to 10, researchers explored the roots of information avoidance using both hypothetical scenarios and real-world games. Their goal was to understand when and why children start to engage in strategic ignorance when faced with information choices.
In the first experiment, 120 children were presented with pairs of hypothetical scenarios. One of each pair included a motivation to avoid learning information. For example:
In one case, children were asked if they wanted to know about a better prize they didn’t win (disappointment scenario)
In another, they could learn if they were the kid nobody wanted at a birthday party (social rejection scenario).
Other situations included learning why someone disagreed with them (belief challenge), or why their favorite candy was bad (preference threat).
Across all six types of scenarios, older children (especially 9-10-year-olds) were more likely than younger children to avoid learning the troubling information when a motivation to avoid was present. Younger children generally chose to know, regardless of the emotional or self-concept implications.
With increasing age, there was a growing tendency to look away from information that might cause negative emotions.
In another experiment, the researchers used a decision-making game that added real-world stakes. Children chose between two “buckets” that would earn them varying numbers of stickers. Each bucket allocated a number of stickers to themselves and another child, and those numbers could be even or uneven.
Children could always see how many stickers they’d earn themselves from each bucket before making their choice, but they were also given the option to learn what their partner would receive from each bucket. In other words, there was a moral incentive to check if their choice would hurt someone else. Children could check and choose buckets with fairer distributions, or they could go for the bucket with the biggest personal reward each time.
Overall, the kids were quite generous, choosing the more egalitarian rather than selfish bucket the majority of the time. However, almost 50% of older children avoided learning about how many stickers went to the other kid. In contrast, less than 25% of 5-6-year-olds were avoiding this same information.
This isn’t because the younger children were less selfish—if anything, they were more likely to choose the self-interested bucket at the other child’s expense, but they cared less about the emotional consequences of finding out. According to the researchers, older children were exploiting moral wiggle room when acting in self-interest to maintain plausible deniability by saying “I didn’t know what was in the other sticker count”.
In a final experiment, the researchers looked at younger children (5–6 years old) to see if they could be nudged into avoidance by framing the goal differently. When told to make choices that would help them feel “curious,” children eagerly sought information. But when told to prioritize “feeling happy,” they began to avoid learning things that might upset them even at age 5.
This suggests that the seeds of information avoidance exist early, but require the right motivation to sprout. With age, emotional motivations become more deeply internalized and automatic.
Together, these experiments demonstrate that the transition from open-minded knowledge-seeking to strategic avoidance is not just a feature of tough decision-making in adulthood. Instead, it’s a developmental process that begins in childhood, with emotional motivations taking the front seat around ages 8 to 10.
⭐️ Takeaway tips
#1. Recognize that avoidance is a learned and controllable behavior
Children aren’t born avoiding information—they learn to do it when they start to predict that it might help protect their feelings, image, or interests. Being mindful of how we react to discomforting information as adults can help us make better decisions. Sometimes, fearful avoidance can delay information we really need to hear. Acknowledging our negative emotions while also having a clear cost-benefit analysis in our head can help us tackle fear when it’s the right thing to do.
#2. Encourage curiosity-oriented goals
One of my own children has a tendency to avoid playing a game he loves (chess) out of fear he might lose and feel upset or insecure. Emphasizing that we learn from our losses helps to reinforce his willingness to tackle difficult challenges. Shifting our private goals and motivations from “stay happy” to “stay curious” can help us become more comfortable with learning new information. When engaging kids (or ourselves) in problem-solving and decision-making, frame the experience as a chance to learn rather than something to feel threatened by.
#3. Watch for moral wiggle room in your own decisions
We like to think of ourselves as moral and ethical people who want to avoid unnecessarily hurting other people. But all of us have blindspots that we reinforce by avoiding troubling emotional information. Be aware of how your daily habits impact life around you, and consider whether there are easy changes you can make to habits like shopping, eating, or socializing that might benefit your own life and the lives of others around you.
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
~ Marie Curie
I enjoyed this article. It is so true. Almost every day, I talk to some kid who avoids. With some discussion, they can acknowledge that whatever we were discussing in therapy made them feel bad in some way or another. This also reminded me of a silly situation with my kids. I have two sons and a stepson. My stepson is 6 years older than my youngest son.
Whenever we went to the movies, if there were a kissing scene, my youngest son would cover his eyes. One day, I walked into the den, and he and his brother were playing Grand Theft Auto. I walked in and said I can't believe it. I said to my younger son, 'You can bear kissing scenes in the movies.' Now you have hookers in a car and shooting them to ttake their money. How are you able to do that? He said I need more health for the game. I suppose that if the reward is substantial enough, kids can overcome an uncomfortable situation. Let's not mention the mother's judgment in this scenario
kissing scenes