Choosing not to see: Visual inattention as a method of information avoidance

Abstract

People rely on a number of methods to avoid information that would compel them to change their beliefs or behaviors. However, it remains unclear whether people use visual inattention as a method of information avoidance. In three eye-tracking experiments, we test the hypothesis that people avoid visual information by strategically suppressing and facilitating visual attention depending on where desired and avoided information is likely to appear. Introducing a novel search task, we independently manipulate the probability of where desired and avoided information appear on the screen. Study 1 show that participants learn statistical regularities in information location and utilize this to gradually suppress attention to undesired information. Study 2 and 3 show that participants can simultaneously reduce and increase visual attention to areas where avoided and desired information are most likely to appear. The findings point to suppression of attention as a mechanism behind information avoidance through visual inattention and that reducing the predictability of where information appears could be a fruitful avenue for reducing it.