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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 08 2021, @11:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the who-wants-to-know? dept.

Whether people inform themselves or remain ignorant is due to three factors:

"The information people decide to expose themselves to has important consequences for their health, finance and relationships. By better understanding why people choose to get informed, we could develop ways to convince people to educate themselves."

The researchers conducted five experiments with 543 research participants, to gauge what factors influence information-seeking.

In one of the experiments, participants were asked how much they would like to know about health information, such as whether they had an Alzheimer's risk gene or a gene conferring a strong immune system. In another experiment, they were asked whether they wanted to see financial information, such as exchange rates or what income percentile they fall into, and in another one, whether they would have liked to learn how their family and friends rated them on traits such as intelligence and laziness.

[...] The researchers found that people choose to seek information based on these three factors: expected utility, emotional impact, and whether it was relevant to things they thought of often. This three-factor model best explained decisions to seek or avoid information compared to a range of other alternative models tested.

Some participants repeated the experiments a couple of times, months apart. The researchers found that most people prioritise one of the three motives (feelings, usefulness, frequency of thought) over the others, and their specific tendency remained relatively stable across time and domains, suggesting that what drives each person to seek information is 'trait-like'.

In two experiments, participants also filled out a questionnaire to gauge their general mental health. The researchers found that when people sought information about their own traits, participants who mostly wanted to know about traits they thought about often, reported better mental health.

Journal Reference:
Christopher A. Kelly, Tali Sharot. Individual differences in information-seeking [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27046-5)


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday December 08 2021, @03:20PM (9 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 08 2021, @03:20PM (#1202970) Journal

    Why do we need real information when we now have infotainment?

    We can now uncritically accept any lie or conspiracy theory, no matter how outlandish or ridiculous.

    Eaxmples:

    The Earth is flat.

    After 7 billion doses, the vaccine is not tested enough.

    Having a fake license plate which says PRIVATE, allows one to commit four (maybe five or six) crimes with impunity. (1) having a fake license plate, (2) no drivers license, (3) no insurance, (4) no vehicle registration, and maybe for extra credit: (5) whatever traffic violation caught the attention of the police, (6) failure to ID.

    People choose what "information" they believe.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday December 08 2021, @03:38PM (7 children)

    by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Wednesday December 08 2021, @03:38PM (#1202982) Journal

    Quran, Bible, Torah, ...

    Lies have absurdly huge impact on humanity since forever.

    The real problem is in believers, not in information as such.

    --
    Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 08 2021, @04:12PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 08 2021, @04:12PM (#1202991)

      Western societies are suffering right now because they reject religious morality. They substitute whatever someone in govt, media, or academia tells them today is morality. Sorry, but that is not what built Western society.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 08 2021, @04:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 08 2021, @04:46PM (#1203002)

        Let me guess... it was white supremacists? That look suspiciously like aged jocks that failed high school and want to punch your head in because "your a weirdo"?

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by mhajicek on Wednesday December 08 2021, @04:48PM (3 children)

        by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday December 08 2021, @04:48PM (#1203005)

        There's plenty of suffering due to religious immorality.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 08 2021, @08:14PM (2 children)

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday December 08 2021, @08:14PM (#1203060) Journal

          Oh that's funny, I thought he was describing Evangelical Christianity!

          • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday December 08 2021, @08:35PM (1 child)

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 08 2021, @08:35PM (#1203072) Journal

            Beware of priests baring gifts.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 08 2021, @10:19PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 08 2021, @10:19PM (#1203124)

              "That's no moon!" Abstinence makes the Church grow fondlers. In other (old fake) news, Pope John Paul I died of autoerotic crucifixion, body found by a nun (female). https://www.rawstory.com/pope-john-paul-i/ [rawstory.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 09 2021, @11:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 09 2021, @11:52AM (#1203268)

      Here we go again. Blaming religions for all societies problems, even though more and more people leave religious organizations than ever before.

      https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2018/07/16/millennials-really-leaving-religion-not-just-politics-folks/34880/ [pbs.org]
      https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/ [pewforum.org]
      https://www.prri.org/research/prri-rns-poll-nones-atheist-leaving-religion/ [prri.org]

      Faith in secular science still doesn't fix the issues we have if everyone simply ignores the truth that they find inconvenient for their personal reality.

  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday December 08 2021, @09:41PM

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday December 08 2021, @09:41PM (#1203115)

    Infotainment is why I would have tacked on "quality of the thumbnail" at the end of the three reasons.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.