Item

The pain of suspecting and the comforts of knowing the worst

Shani,Yaniv
; 
Zeelenberg,Marcel
Abstract
Willful ignorance is often framed as a strategy for avoiding moral responsibility in social decision making. We propose a broader view: individuals also avoid or seek information in purely individual contexts as a way to regulate emotions. People may delay confronting themselves to useful, yet painful, truths, or, paradoxically, pursue distressing but useless information to relieve uncertainty. This duality reflects a strategic balance between the emotional costs of knowing and the psychological discomfort of not knowing. We review recent research illustrating how information avoidance and search serve both self-protection and moral regulation. Ultimately, willful ignorance is reframed as a dynamic emotion-regulation strategy that helps individuals navigate the tension between uncertainty, truth, and emotional endurance in both social and personal domains.
Description
Date
2026
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Collections
Tilburg University Research Output Collection
Show all metadata
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Citation
Shani, Y & Zeelenberg, M 2026, 'The pain of suspecting and the comforts of knowing the worst', Current Opinion in Psychology, vol. 67, 102208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102208
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14602/103883
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
Embedded videos