Construction and Validation of the Deliberate Ignorance Scale (DIS)

While humans are often considered to have a fundamental drive to pursue knowledge, they frequently choose to remain ignorant even when it is important and easy for them to know. Termed as Deliberate Ignorance (DI), this paradoxical decision differs from another avoidance behaviors like willful ignorance (WI) and information avoidance (IA), which are more defensive responses. This research constructed and validated the Deliberate Ignorance Scale (DIS) using a formative composite scoring method to capture this construct through an exploratory study in a health context (Study 1, N = 322) and a confirmatory study in a relationship context (Study 2, N = 162). Factor analyses established a robust three-factor structure: Perceived Importance of Knowing the Information (PIKI), Perceived Ease of Accessing the Information (PEAI), and Tendency to Ignore the Information (TII). Results also showed that the perceived importance of knowing remains unaffected by perceived threat. This independence signifies DI as a strategic decision, not a mere defensive response like IA. The DIS captures this structural paradox of Homo ignorans by positioning individual along a continuum from active information seeking to deliberate ignorance under conditions of acknowledged importance of knowing and accessibility.