Jeremy L Foust at Psyche:
Finally, the vacation you’ve been waiting for is happening tomorrow. You and your friends are going on a two-week cruise, free of responsibilities and full of fun. You’re starting to pack when you feel a little bit lightheaded. You don’t think much of it because you’ve been stressed lately trying to get ready for the trip. Later, you start coughing. Probably just allergies, you think to yourself as you go about your day. When you wake up in the morning – the day of the trip – you have a sore throat and chills. You briefly think to yourself: This feels like it could be COVID. Maybe I should take a self-test. You start walking to your medicine cabinet, but then you pause. If you test positive, you’ll feel obliged to isolate from others and miss the trip. You’ve spent so much time thinking about the trip and paid a lot for the tickets. Your friends will be disappointed. I’m sure I’m fine. You decide it’s better not to know.
Whether you’ve actually been in this sort of situation or not, many of us have likely chosen not to know in other ways: for example, delaying a trip to the doctor to get checked out, declining to look at your credit score, or shutting down certain topics of conversation because you prefer to not find out what others really think. This process of choosing not to learn a piece of freely available information is called information avoidance.
More here.
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