Speaker
Description
Children's natural curiosity drives them to seek new information, attend to unexpected events, and test unusual hypotheses. It seems unlikely that they would willingly choose not to know. As adults, however, people frequently engage in deliberate ignorance, consciously choosing not to learn certain information even when it is readily accessible and personally significant. Despite extensive evidence of children's information-seeking behaviors, little is known about the emergence of decisions not to search for information. Here, we address this gap by exploring the developmental roots of deliberate ignorance in children aged 6 to 12. We propose that these roots are tied to children's developing future-oriented cognition—the capacity to simulate future states. As children's capacity to foresee the consequences of knowing certain information develops, we expect their propensity for deliberate ignorance to increase. We further hypothesize that children first exercise deliberate ignorance to protect their sense of safety and emotional well-being. Using narrated scenarios with varying degrees of potential informational threats, we examine parents' and children's assessment of 1) children's choices to seek or ignore the information, 2) their capacity to foresee the consequences of knowing or not knowing the information, and 3) their emotional evaluation of the information. Here, I will discuss preliminary data, our updated study design, and future directions for this research into the development of a cognitive strategy that becomes increasingly relevant in today's information-rich world.
