Intentionally “biased”: People purposely use to-be-ignored information, but can be persuaded not to.

Abundant research has shown that people fail to disregard to-be-ignored information (e.g., hindsight bias, curse of knowledge), which has contributed to the popular notion that people are unwillingly and unconsciously affected by information. Here we provide evidence that, instead, people simply do not want to ignore such information. The findings: In Studies 1 and 2, the majority of participants explicitly indicated a desire to use to-be-ignored information in classic paradigms. In Study 3, the effect of receiving to-be-ignored information was driven entirely by the subset of people who wanted to use it. In Study 4, persuading participants to ignore inadmissible evidence in a mock jury trial reduced the impact of such evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).