%0 Generic
%A Balietti, Anca
%A Budjan, Angelika
%A Eymess, Tillmann
%A Soldà, Alice
%C Heidelberg
%D 2023
%F heidok:33733
%K air pollution, information avoidance, information retention, perceived control, motivated cognition
%R 10.11588/heidok.00033733
%T Strategic Ignorance and Perceived Control
%U https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/33733/
%V 0730
%X Information can trigger unpleasant emotions. As a result, individuals might be tempted to willfully ignore it. We experimentally investigate whether increasing perceived control can mitigate strategic ignorance. Participants from India were presented with a choice to receive information about the health risk associated with air pollution and later asked to recall it. We find that perceived control leads to a substantial improvement in information retention. Moreover, perceived control mostly benefits optimists, who show both a reduction in information avoidance and an increase in information retention. This latter result is confirmed with a US sample. A theoretical framework rationalizes these findings.