Uncertainty about paternity: a study on deliberate ignorance.

Deliberate ignorance is the willful choice not to know the answer to a question of personal relevance. The question of whether a man is the biological father of his child is a sensitive issue in many cultures and can lead to litigation, divorce, and disinheritance. Thanks to DNA tests, men are easily able to resolve the uncertainty. Psychological theories that picture humans as informavores who are averse to ambiguity suggest men would do a DNA test, as does evolutionary theory, which considers investing in raising a rival's offspring a mistake. We conducted two representative studies using computer-based face-to-face interviews in Germany (n = 969) and Spain (n = 1,002) to investigate whether men actually want to know and how women would react to this desire. As a base line, Germans (Spanish) estimated that 10% (20%) of fathers mistakenly believe that they are the biological father of their child. Nevertheless, in both countries, only 4% of fathers reported that they had performed a DNA paternity test, while 96% said they had not. In contrast, among men without children, 38% (33%) of Germans (Spanish) stated they would do a DNA test if they had children, mostly without telling their partners. Spanish women with children would more often disapprove of a paternity test or threaten their husbands with divorce (25%) than would German women (13%). We find that a simple test of risk aversion, measured also by the purchase of non-mandatory insurances, is correlated with not wanting to know.

Dangerous Knowledge and Proxy-Reasons: A Kurdish Woman's Therapeutic Attempts.

Jihan, a former Kurdish guerilla fighter, struggles to gain medical treatment for the health problems she suffers as a result of war and trauma. The provision of care in Turkey has been motivated by ethno-political security concerns. Therefore, medical encounters are characterized by silences, not-knowing and of averting danger. Based on theories of ignorance, I explore how experiences of war and torture constitute dangerous knowledge that are difficult to share in a context, without a guaranteed therapeutic safe space. Patient and doctor navigate mistrust, silences and proxy-reasons in an attempt to deal with the traumata and violent experiences left unsaid.

Effects of experimental, network-based social circle norm feedback on studying behavior and alcohol consumption.

Misrepresentation of peer behavior has often been observed in college students and may lead to over-expression of alcohol consumption and under-expression of studying. While social norm feedback approaches have had mixed success in addressing these misrepresentations and altering behavior, they may have been too unspecific to be effective and did not directly assess individual perception accuracy. We thus investigated how specific, one-time feedback on the behavioral distribution of alcohol consumption or study time of a clearly defined, individually-adjusted social circle would affect the respective norm estimations and behavior of a class of Psychology students (n = 89 in January) across their first year of study. Students overestimated alcohol consumption and partially underestimated studying norms. While social circle feedback on alcohol consumption did not clearly affect both individual estimation accuracy and alcohol consumption, feedback on peers' studying time increased studying with no clear effect on estimation accuracy. This indicates that social circle norm feedback may be suitable to evoke behavioral effects. The correction of the detected inaccuracies did not appear to be a precondition for the feedback to be effective.

The Making of Clandestinity: Strategic Ignorance in Abortion Practices in Latin America.

Abortion is a public secret in Latin America. It is highly restricted across the majority of the continent and yet millions of abortions take place every year. We use the sociological framework of 'strategic ignorance' to argue that convenient not knowing, erasure and concealment allow for the simultaneous negation and allowance of abortions in Latin America. By drawing on interviews with people involved in abortion activism and access across the continent we examine three sets of actors: the state, abortion providers and individuals. When wielded by the state, strategic ignorance reproduces the status quo of the criminalization of abortion but when wielded by abortion providers and individuals it creates the conditions for 'clandestine' abortions to be procured without prosecution. Strategic ignorance is therefore mobilized by the powerful as well as the powerless who are resisting state control of their fertility and reproductive lives.

Wake effects and temperature plumes: Coping with non-knowledge in the expansion of wind and geothermal energy.

Energy transitions are knowledge-intensive processes where a multitude of actors are trying to cope with inevitable knowledge gaps, surprises, and uncertainties. In this context, we focus on two techno-physical phenomena that are gaining practical relevance with the expansion of wind and geothermal energy extraction, and are surrounded by significant unknowns: wake effects and temperature plumes. Both phenomena can potentially affect the efficiency of energy production, but the extent of their impact is not yet known. Based on 28 semi-structured interviews with experts in the fields of wind and geothermal energy, we explore how different central actors perceive and interpret non-knowledge of wake effects and temperature plumes, and how they deal with it. We show that there are strategies for either using non-knowledge as a basis for action or simply ignoring it and sweeping knowledge gaps under the rug. Both strategies serve the function of protecting agency and keeping things going.

RecSOI: recommending research directions using statements of ignorance.

The more science advances, the more questions are asked. This compounding growth can make it difficult to keep up with current research directions. Furthermore, this difficulty is exacerbated for junior researchers who enter fields with already large bases of potentially fruitful research avenues. In this paper, we propose a novel task and a recommender system for research directions, RecSOI, that draws from statements of ignorance (SOIs) found in the research literature. By building researchers' profiles based on textual elements, RecSOI generates personalized recommendations of potential research directions tailored to their interests. In addition, RecSOI provides context for the recommended SOIs, so that users can quickly evaluate how relevant the research direction is for them. In this paper, we provide an overview of RecSOI's functioning, implementation, and evaluation, demonstrating its effectiveness in guiding researchers through the vast landscape of potential research directions.

We know that we don't know: Children's understanding of common ignorance in a coordination game.

Common ground is the knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions shared between partners in an interaction. Previous research has focused extensively on what partners know they know together, that is, "common knowledge." However, another important aspect of common ground is what partners know they do not know together, that is, "common ignorance." A new coordination game was designed to investigate children's use of common ignorance. Without communicating or seeing each other's decisions, 4- to 8-year-olds needed to make the same decision as their partner about whether to try to retrieve a reward. To retrieve it, at least one of them needed to know a secret code. The knowledge/ignorance of both partners was ostensively manipulated by showing one partner, both partners, or neither partner the secret code in four conditions: common knowledge (both knew the code), common ignorance (neither partner knew the code), common privileged self knowledge (only children knew the code), and common privileged other knowledge (only their partner knew the code). Children's decisions, latency, and uncertainty were coded. Results showed that the common ignorance states were generally more difficult than the common knowledge states. Unexpectedly, children at all ages had difficulty with coordinating when their partner knew the code but they themselves did not (common privileged other knowledge). This study shows that, along with common knowledge, common ignorance and common privileged self knowledge and other knowledge also play important roles in coordinating with others but may develop differently.

Blindfolding political trust: the palliative effect of trust-based ignorance of political performance problems.

In this study, we gather empirical evidence supporting the assumption that political trust is related to the ignorance of political performance problems, which ignorance, in turn, has a palliative function as it protects subjective well-being. We hypothesized that political trust has a stronger positive effect on the evaluation of political performance (and indirectly on subjective well-being) if actual performance is more questionable. These hypotheses were tested by multilevel structural equation modeling. Our multilevel moderated mediation models supporting this hypothesis were based on the 2018 European Social Survey dataset (N = 49,519) extended with county-level indices indicating actual performance in healthcare, education, and economy. The results also imply that the bigger the actual problem is, the stronger ignorance is driven by political trust.

Informed Consent Under Ignorance.

In recent years, an old challenge to informed consent has been rediscovered: the challenge of ignorance. Several authors argue that due to the presence of irreducible ignorance in certain treatments, giving informed consent to these treatments is not possible. The present paper examines in what ways ignorance is believed to prevent informed consent and which treatments are affected by that. At this, it becomes clear that if the challenge of ignorance truly holds, it poses a major problem to informed consent. The paper argues, however, that from both an empirical and a theoretical point of view, it is not convincing that ignorance prevents informed consent. Still, it seems important that the presence of irreducible ignorance is openly discussed during the informed consent process.

Social and Ethical Implications of Digital Crisis Technologies: Case Study of Pandemic Simulation Models During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Responses to public health crises are increasingly technological in nature, as the prominence of COVID-19-related statistics and simulations amply demonstrates. However, the use of technologies is preconditional and has various implications. These implications can not only affect acceptance but also challenge the acceptability of these technologies with regard to the ethical and normative dimension. OBJECTIVE: This study focuses on pandemic simulation models as algorithmic governance tools that played a central role in political decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess the social implications of pandemic simulation models, the premises of data collection, sorting, and evaluation must be disclosed and reflected upon. Consequently, the social construction principles of digital health technologies must be revealed and examined for their effects with regard to social, ethical, and ultimately political issues. METHODS: This case study starts with a systematization of different simulation approaches to create a typology of pandemic simulation models. On the basis of this, various properties, functions, and challenges of these simulation models are revealed and discussed in detail from a socioscientific point of view. RESULTS: The typology of pandemic simulation methods reveals the diversity of model-driven handling of pandemic threats. However, it is reasonable to assume that the use of simulation models could increasingly shift toward agent-based or artificial intelligence models in the future, thus promoting the logic of algorithmic decision-making in response to public health crises. As algorithmic decision-making focuses more on predicting future dynamics than statistical practices of assessing pandemic events, this study discusses this development in detail, resulting in an operationalized overview of the key social and ethical issues related to pandemic crisis technologies. CONCLUSIONS: This study identifies 3 major recommendations for the future of pandemic crisis technologies.

Humanitarian ignorance: towards a new paradigm of non-knowledge in digital humanitarianism.

This paper introduces the notion of 'humanitarian ignorance' to address growing concern regarding non-knowledge, as datafication becomes a central instrument and ambition of the humanitarian sector. With the turn to digital humanitarianism, contemporary humanitarian action increasingly relies on technology-driven quantification to expand the ability to collect, analyse, and present information. Utilising datafication processes, humanitarian organisations seek to assess 'risk' and mitigate 'uncertainty' more efficiently. Although central to their knowledge management and decision-making in low information circumstances, the conceptual notions of 'risk' and 'uncertainty' are inadequate to capture the full spectrum of non-knowledge in a time of digital humanitarianism. We introduce 'humanitarian ignorance' here to challenge the assumption that datafication allows humanitarian organisations to make fully informed, delimited, and thus 'better' decisions. Ultimately, we accentuate the paradox that while datafication is thought to reduce risk and uncertainty in humanitarian affairs by suggesting higher levels of control, insight, and certainty, these efforts in fact open new expanses of ignorance and unknowns.

Moral reasoning behind the veil of ignorance: An investigation into perspective-taking accessibility in the context of autonomous vehicles.

Perspective-taking (PT) accessibility has been recognized as an important factor in affecting moral reasoning, also playing a non-trivial role in moral investigation towards autonomous vehicles (AVs). A new proposal to deepen this effect leverages the principles of the veil of ignorance (VOI), as a moral reasoning device aimed to control self-interested decisions by limiting the access to specific perspectives and to potentially biased information. Throughout two studies, we deepen the role of VOI reasoning in the moral perception of AVs, disclosing personal and contingent information progressively throughout the experiment. With the use of the moral trilemma paradigm, two different VOI conditions were operationalized, inspired by the Original Position theory by John Rawls and the Equiprobability Model by John Harsanyi. Evidence suggests a significant role of VOI reasoning in affecting moral reasoning, which seems not independent from the order in which information is revealed. Coherently, a detrimental effect of self-involvement on utilitarian behaviours was detected. These results highlight the importance of considering PT accessibility and self-involvement when investigating moral attitudes towards AVs, since it can help the intelligibility of general concerns and hesitations towards this new technology.

'And she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man': androcentrism and the creation of knowledge-driven ignorance.

In this paper, I critically analyse biomedical clinical studies and literature reviews regarding the physiological phenomenon known as female ejaculation to demonstrate a process by which androcentric bias, which positions the male body as the scientific 'standard human', produces what I term as knowledge-driven ignorance. I show how even though knowledge about female ejaculation has expanded, its biomedical ontological status remains vague and controversial. The production of ignorance in this case does not result from active erasure or concealment, but rather from unintentional disregard, and is a by-product of knowledge-creation itself. As such, it is not only the narration of the scientific story that has the power to abject and exclude certain bodies from culture, but also what is untold and unknown.

Examining the role of nurse executives in homecare through the lens of the Sociology of Ignorance and Critical Management Studies.

This article presents a novel theoretical approach to explore nurse executives' paradoxical identity and agency of executive and nurse in homecare organizations. This complex phenomenon has yet to be well theorized or analyzed. Through a synthesis of literature, we demonstrate that Critical Management Studies, as informed by Foucault, and the Sociology of Ignorance, can create a different understanding of the complex interplay between knowledge and nonknowledge (ignorance) that positions nurse executives in both influential and precarious ways in homecare organizations. This theoretical framework has the potential to allow for the explicit exploration of nurse executives' strategic epistemic and discursive positioning and highlights hierarchal power structures within homecare organizations. We posit that this framework, that spans nursing, management and sociology disciplines, sets a different understanding of homecare organizations as epistemic landscapes, exposing institutional knowledge and ignorance dynamics that remain largely concealed and unchallenged, yet are integral to understanding nurse executives' epistemic agency.

Is football coming out? Anti-gay attitudes, social desirability, and pluralistic ignorance in amateur and professional football.

Past work consistently points to improved attitudes towards gay athletes and growing support for homosexuality, yet reports of a homophobic climate in amateur and professional football persist. Here, we explore two potential explanations for the prevalence of homophobia in football despite low levels of anti-gay attitudes: social desirability and pluralistic ignorance. We conduct an online survey among a football-affine and socio-demographically diverse sample in the UK. We find that anti-gay attitudes are rare. Importantly, estimates from a list experiment do not differ from the prevalence measured by direct questions, providing no evidence of social desirability. By contrast, second-order beliefs about anti-gay attitudes substantially and consistently exceed attitudes, pointing towards pluralistic ignorance as the most likely explanation. We conclude by emphasizing the need for transparent communication to reduce pluralistic ignorance and correct misperceptions among players, officials and supporters.

Quem Pode Falar no Divã? Raça e Psicanálise Situada / Who can Speak on the Couch? Race and Situated Psychoanalysis / ¿Quién Puede Hablar en el Diván? Raza y Psicoanálisis Situado

Quem pode falar no divã? Como a inscrição do sujeito e do sujeito do inconsciente em relações sociais de poder de classe, gênero, sexualidade, raça, idade, validade, limita o acesso a uma elaboração analítica? O reconhecimento da colonialidade, como efeito de dominação e lugar de enunciação que persiste além da colonização, tornou possível a emergência de novas formas subjetivas, culturais e epistêmicas, incentivando a psicanálise a escutar de outra forma. Este artigo propõe se debruçar sobre a incidência da raça e da branquitude na psicanálise a partir das epistemologias do posicionamento e da epistemologia da ignorância. No contexto social francês, enquanto uma parte crescente da população francesa experimenta diariamente a discriminação racial, essa é veementemente negada por uma maioria de político·as e pesquisadore·as, que recusam até o uso da palavra "raça". A partir dessa negação oficial do racismo sistémico pelo poder político e por uma maioria de estudos acadêmicos, o artigo tenta analisar a epistemologia da ignorância que prevalece na postura clínica e teórica de uma psicanálise maioritária. Trata-se de estudar a forma como uma ignorância branca provoca uma desescuta das questões de raça no divã, produz efeitos transferenciais de silenciamento, e nega vivências particulares em nome do universalismo.

Who can speak on the couch? How does the inscription of the subject and the subject of the unconscious in class, gender, sexuality, race, age and validity social power relations limit access to a psychoanalytical elaboration? The recognition of coloniality as an effect of domination and a locus of enunciation that persists beyond colonisation has made it possible for new subjective, cultural and epistemic forms to emerge, encouraging psychoanalysis to listen differently. This article looks at the impact of race and whiteness on psychoanalysis through the perspective of the Standpoint Epistemologies and the Epistemology of Ignorance. In the French social context, while a growing part of the French population experiences racial discrimination on a daily basis, it is vehemently denied by a majority of politicians and researchers, who refuse to even use the word "race". Starting from this official denial of systemic racism by the political establishment and a majority of academic studies, the article seeks to analyse the epistemology of ignorance that prevails in the clinical and theoretical stance of a majoritian psychoanalysis. The aim is to study the way in which white ignorance causes race issues to be non-listened to on the couch produces silencing transferential effects, and denies particular experiences in the name of universalism.

¿Quién puede hablar en el diván? ¿Cómo la inscripción del sujeto y del sujeto del inconsciente en las relaciones sociales de poder de clase, género, sexualidad, raza, edad, validez, limitan el acceso a una elaboración analítica? El reconocimiento de la colonialidad como un efecto de dominación y un lugar de enunciación que persiste más allá de la colonización ha posibilitado la emergencia de nuevas formas subjetivas, culturales y epistémicas, impulsionando al psicoanálisis a escuchar de otra manera. Este artículo examina el impacto de la raza y la blanquitud en el psicoanálisis desde la perspectiva de las epistemologías del posicionamiento y la epistemología de la ignorancia. En el contexto social francés, mientras que una parte creciente de la población francesa experimenta a diario la discriminación racial, ésta es negada con vehemencia por una mayoría de políticos/as e investigadores/as, que se niegan incluso a utilizar la palabra "raza". Partiendo de esta negación oficial del racismo sistémico por parte del poder político y de una mayoría de estudios académicos, el artículo intenta analizar la epistemología de la ignorancia que prevalece en la postura clínica y teórica de un psicoanálisis mayoritario. El objetivo es estudiar el modo en que la ignorancia blanca hace que las cuestiones raciales sean des-escuchadas en el diván, produce efectos transferenciales de silenciamiento y niega las experiencias particulares en nombre del universalismo.

Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens.

Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people's attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical ignoring-choosing what to ignore and where to invest one's limited attentional capacities. We review three types of cognitive strategies for implementing critical ignoring: self-nudging, in which one ignores temptations by removing them from one's digital environments; lateral reading, in which one vets information by leaving the source and verifying its credibility elsewhere online; and the do-not-feed-the-trolls heuristic, which advises one to not reward malicious actors with attention. We argue that these strategies implementing critical ignoring should be part of school curricula on digital information literacy. Teaching the competence of critical ignoring requires a paradigm shift in educators' thinking, from a sole focus on the power and promise of paying close attention to an additional emphasis on the power of ignoring. Encouraging students and other online users to embrace critical ignoring can empower them to shield themselves from the excesses, traps, and information disorders of today's attention economy.

Information Avoidance: Past Perspectives and Future Directions.

In the present age of unprecedented access to information, it is important to understand how and why people avoid information. Multiple definitions of "information avoidance" exist, and key aspects of these definitions deserve attention, such as distinguishing information avoidance from (lack of) information seeking, considering the intentionality and temporal nature of information avoidance, and considering the personal relevance of the information. In this review, we provide a cross-disciplinary historical account of theories and empirical research on information avoidance and seeking, drawing from research in multiple fields. We provide a framework of antecedents of information avoidance, categorized into beliefs about the information (e.g., risk perceptions), beliefs about oneself (e.g., coping resources), and social and situational factors (e.g., social norms), noting that constructs across categories overlap and are intertwined. We suggest that research is needed on both positive and negative consequences of information avoidance and on interventions to reduce information avoidance (when appropriate). Research is also needed to better understand temporal dynamics of information avoidance and how it manifests in everyday life. Finally, comprehensive theoretical models are needed that differentiate avoidance from seeking. Research on information avoidance is quickly expanding, and the topic will only grow in importance.

Extraordinary claims in the literature on high-intensity interval training (HIIT): III. Critical analysis of four foundational arguments from an interdisciplinary lens.

Kinesiology aspires to be an integrated, interdisciplinary field that studies human movement from multiple perspectives. However, the main societal deliverables of the field, namely exercise prescriptions and physical activity recommendations, still reflect fragmentation, placing more emphasis on physiological outcomes than on behavioral and other considerations. Recently, researchers have called for the introduction of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to the domain of public health, based on the argument that HIIT can maximize fitness and health benefits for a fraction of the time recommended by the prevailing model of physical activity in public-health guidelines. Here, we show that an unintended side-effect of arguments underpinning the implementation of HIIT in the domain of public health might have been the exacerbation of segmentation. To highlight the value of interdisciplinarity, four foundational claims in support of HIIT are critiqued by tapping into cognate literatures: (1) the primary reason people do not exercise is lack of time, (2) HIIT is relevant to public health, (3) HIIT is being proposed as merely another option, so there is no basis for controversy, and (4) HIIT is safe and well tolerated. These claims are contradicted by credible lines of evidence. To improve the accuracy and effectiveness of its public claims, kinesiology should remain committed to the ideals of integration and interdisciplinarity.

Blinding to Circumvent Human Biases: Deliberate Ignorance in Humans, Institutions, and Machines.

Inequalities and injustices are thorny issues in liberal societies, manifesting in forms such as the gender-pay gap; sentencing discrepancies among Black, Hispanic, and White defendants; and unequal medical-resource distribution across ethnicities. One cause of these inequalities is implicit social bias-unconsciously formed associations between social groups and attributions such as "nurturing," "lazy," or "uneducated." One strategy to counteract implicit and explicit human biases is delegating crucial decisions, such as how to allocate benefits, resources, or opportunities, to algorithms. Algorithms, however, are not necessarily impartial and objective. Although they can detect and mitigate human biases, they can also perpetuate and even amplify existing inequalities and injustices. We explore how a philosophical thought experiment, Rawls's "veil of ignorance," and a psychological phenomenon, deliberate ignorance, can help shield individuals, institutions, and algorithms from biases. We discuss the benefits and drawbacks of methods for shielding human and artificial decision makers from potentially biasing information. We then broaden our discussion beyond the issues of bias and fairness and turn to a research agenda aimed at improving human judgment accuracy with the assistance of algorithms that conceal information that has the potential to undermine performance. Finally, we propose interdisciplinary research questions.