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Rational ignorance

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Rational ignorance is refraining from acquiring knowledge when the cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the potential benefit that the knowledge would provide.

Ignorance about an issue is said to be "rational" when the cost of educating oneself about the issue sufficiently to make an informed decision can outweigh any potential benefit one could reasonably expect to gain from that decision, and so it would be irrational to waste time doing so. This has consequences for the quality of decisions made by large numbers of people, such as general elections, where the probability of any one vote changing the outcome is very small.

The term is most often found in economics, particularly public choice theory, but also used in other disciplines which study rationality and choice, including philosophy (epistemology) and game theory.

The term was coined by Anthony Downs in An Economic Theory of Democracy.[1]

Example

Consider an employer attempting to choose between two candidates offering to complete a task at the cost of $10 / hour. The length of time needed to complete the task may be longer or shorter depending on the skill of the person performing the task, so it is in the employer's best interests to find the fastest worker possible. Assume that the cost of another day of interviewing the candidates is $100. If the employer had deduced from the interviews so far that both candidates would complete the task in somewhere between 195 and 205 hours, it would be in the employer's best interests to choose one or the other by some easily applied metric (for example, flipping a coin) rather than spend the $100 on determining the better candidate, saving at most $100 in labor.

In many cases, the decision may be made on the basis of heuristics; a simple decision model which may not be completely accurate. For example, in deciding which brand of prepared food is most nutritious, a shopper might simply choose the one with (for example) the lowest amount of sugar, rather than conducting a research study of all the positive and negative factors in nutrition.

Applications

In marketing

Marketers can take advantage of rational ignorance by increasing the complexity of a decision. If the difference in value between a quality product and a poor product is less than the cost to perform the research necessary to differentiate between them, then it is more rational for a consumer to just take his chances on whichever of the two is more convenient and available. Thus, it is in the interest of the producer of a lower value product to proliferate features, options, and package combinations which will tend to increase the number of shoppers who decide it's too much trouble to make an informed decision.

In politics

Politics and elections especially display the same dynamic. By increasing the number of issues that a person needs to consider to make a rational decision about candidates or policies, politicians and pundits encourage single-issue voting, party-line voting, jingoism, selling votes, or dart-throwing all of which may tip the playing field in favor of politicians who do not actually represent the electorate.

Because the cost/benefit ratio increases with increasing costs or decreasing the benefit, the same effect can occur when politicians protect their policy decisions from the preferences of the public. To the degree that the electorate perceives their individual votes to count for less, they will have less incentive to spend any time actually learning any details about the candidate(s).

A more nuanced example occurs when a voter identifies with a particular political party, akin to the adoption of a favorite movie critic. Based on prior experience a responsible voter will seek politicians or a political party that draws conclusions about social policy that are similar to what their own conclusions would have been had they done a complete analysis. But when voters find themselves agreeing with the same party or politician across a number of election cycles, many voters simply trust that the same will continue to be true and "vote the ticket" instead of wasting time on a complete investigation.

Criticisms

Much of the empirical support for the idea of rational ignorance was drawn from studies of voter apathy, which reached particularly strong conclusions in the 1950s.[2] However, apathy appeared to decline sharply in the 1960s as concern about issues such as the Vietnam War mounted, and political polarization increased.[3] This is consistent with expectations from Public Choice Theory; as voters' interest in the results of policy decisions increase, the perceived benefit of the analysis (or the trip to the ballot box) increases, so more people will consider it rational to repair their ignorance.

Additionally, rational ignorance is scrutinized for its broadening effect on the decisions that individuals make in different matters. The investment of time and energy on learning about the specified subject has ramifications on other decision areas. Individuals sometimes ignore this when unconsciously assessing the investment cost versus payout. The external benefits of acquiring knowledge in one area—those benefits occurring in other decision areas—are therefore subject to being overlooked.

See also

References

  1. ^ Downs. (1957), An Economic Theory of Democracy; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957; p. 244–46, 266–71
  2. ^ Campbell, A., Converse, P., Miller, W. and Stokes. D. (1960), 'The American Voter', Wiley, N.Y.
  3. ^ Nie, N., Verba, S. and Petrocik, J. (1976), 'The Changing American Voter', Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
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