Abstract
A growing body of research, pioneered by Dana et al. (2007), has confirmed the prevalence of strategic ignorance: if acting in one’s own interest might harm the interest of someone else, many individuals prefer not to know whether interests conflict or align; moreover, if given the option to stay ignorant, subjects tend to behave more selfishly. In particular, Dana et al. (2007) found that in a binary version of the dictator game, only 26% of subjects chose the selfish alternative when payoffs were known. However, when dictators had to click a button to reveal whether there was a conflict of interest between themselves and the recipient, many abstained from revealing this information, and as much as 63% of those who actually faced conflicting interest now chose the selfish option.
Although willful ignorance may be caused by confusion or lack of interest, individuals may also avoid information in order to keep a good self-image or social image while behaving selfishly. If an individual – below, the dictator – stays ignorant for such self-image reasons, however, and someone else imposes the avoided information on them anyway, this could trigger negative social reactions. Also, if the dictator knows that a bystander is likely to impose the information, this may deter the dictator from choosing ignorance in the first place. The present project aims to explore, in a context of strategic ignorance, the interplay between dictators and bystanders who may choose to impose information on the dictator.
Our first question is whether the presence of a bystander affects the share of selfish choices by dictators. If so, is this caused by the mere presence of the bystander – through giving the dictator a feeling of being watched, for example – or is it caused by the bystander’s actual provision of information?
If the dictator would really have preferred to stay ignorant, i.e., the information is in fact unwelcome, a bystander choosing to provide information might trigger negative emotions on the dictator’s part. Our second question is thus whether bystanders’ provision of information is deterred when the dictator has an option to sanction the bystander.
Third, what determines whether dictators use the option (if available) to sanction bystanders? Are sanctions mainly used by dictators who prefer to stay ignorant? If so, do they mainly sanction bystanders who provide information? If the bystander provides information, does it matter whether the news is good (aligned interests) or bad (conflicting interests)?
Fourth, does the knowledge that a bystander is present reduce dictators’ propensity to stay ignorant, as in the study by Lind et al. (2019)?