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At Least I Tried: Partial Willful Ignorance, Information Acquisition, and Social Preferences

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  • J. Braxton Gately

Abstract

Agents cannot always choose to avoid all information about the outcomes of their decisions; this phenomenon remains understudied in the literature on willful ignorance. I use a modified dictator-game laboratory experiment to investigate how ignorant agents are willing to be about the effects of their actions when they must know at least some information about the outcomes of their actions. Dictators choose between two allocations and know recipients' payouts in one allocation, but not the other; they may acquire signals about the unknown allocation. Dictators are more likely to acquire additional signals when they believe the unknown allocation is relatively egalitarian, though this diminishes in the number of signals acquired. There is significant heterogeneity in search behavior and evidence of nuance in motivated behavior.

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  • J. Braxton Gately, 2023. "At Least I Tried: Partial Willful Ignorance, Information Acquisition, and Social Preferences," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 10(3), pages 163-187, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jnlrbe:105.00000167
    DOI: 10.1561/105.00000167
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