Willful ignorance in law and morality

Willful Ignorance in a World of Biased Misinformation

Suppose individuals face a claim of uncertain validity and can only obtain more information from sources known to sometimes report biased misinformation for or against the claim. In such an environment, it is optimal for Bayesian expected utility maximizers to select the source biased toward their current behavior even if they know that source more frequently reports misinformation than an oppo...

Does Willful Ignorance Deflect Punishment? – An Experimental Study

This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff consequences of his decision for a receiver. A third party can punish the dictator after observing the dictator’...

Deception in Morality and Law

Euthanasia, morality, and law.

Morality Influences How People Apply the Ignorance of the Law Defense

In four empirical studies, we showed that laypeople apply the ignorance of the law defense differently depending on the perceived morality of the defendant’s course of conduct at the time of the illegal act. Moral and neutral defendants who pled ignorance of the law were afforded leniency, whereas immoral defendants were sentenced as though they were not ignorant, even when defendants in all th...