When children choose not to know: The development of deliberate ignorance

When you were a child, did you tear open presents immediately or wait to savor the surprise? When you heard your parents’ loud voices, did you eavesdrop or retreat, trying not to hear? These everyday moments reflect an important capacity: the ability to decide not to know, even when information is available, potentially relevant, and nearly costless. This phenomenon has been called deliberate ignorance. While deliberate ignorance is well-documented in adults, including in highly consequential domains, such as health or social decisions, little is known about how it develops. Across 13 vignettes we examined preferences for deliberate ignorance in 150 children aged 6 to 12 years. We find that deliberate ignorance exists, already in middle childhood: On average, children preferred deliberate ignorance in 31% of cases; reaching up to 75% in one vignette. Only 8% of children (n = 12) preferred to know across all vignettes. Children with prior real-world experience with the presented information were more likely to prefer not to know, and this preference for deliberate ignorance increased with age. Children preferred ignorance less for outcomes that they perceived as threatening. Our findings offer new insights into early signatures of deliberate ignorance as a tool children use to regulate their information intake as they adapt to increasingly complex information environments with age.