The Psychology of Ignorance

Abstract This book develops foundations for a psychology of ignorance by providing an explicit and critical account of what psychology has had to say about ignorance. Its scope includes the nature and causes of ignorance, when and why we attribute ignorance to ourselves or to others, how we feel, think, and behave when we are aware of our ignorance, when and why we choose to be ignorant, and how and why we impose ignorance on one another. Its primary goals are making psychology’s implicit treatments of ignorance explicit, identifying missing connections within psychology on this topic as well as connections with other disciplines, and rebalancing psychology’s largely negative orientation toward ignorance. The first five chapters focus on the nature of ignorance and its neglect as a research topic by psychology, what we don’t know and why we don’t know it, and how and why we make claims and attributions about ignorance to ourselves or to others. Topics include metacognition, theory of mind, inattentional blindness, and the unconscious. Chapter 6 examines varieties of dysfunctional ignorance and their relations with psychological disorders. Chapters 7–9 investigate decision-making under various kinds of ignorance and uncertainty, the emotions that ignorance generates, and when and why we prefer to be ignorant. Chapters 10 and 11 examine how and why we create and impose ignorance on each other, through indirection, secrecy, lies, and censoring. The final chapter outlines future directions for developments in theory and research and engagement with other disciplines in ignorance studies.