We actively avoid information that can help us

People avoid information when it might hurt their self-image. But when it comes to really consequential things, we tend to want to know so that we can prepare. There’s a tipping point, but we don’t know exactly where it is, says Emily Ho in this interview conducted by Thomas Stackpole for the Harvard Business Review.

Emily Ho of Northwestern University and two co-researchers asked more than 2,300 survey participants whether they would like to get various kinds of information that could be useful to them, including how their retirement accounts stacked up against their peers’, what listeners thought of a speech they’d recently given, and how co-workers rated their strengths and weaknesses.