Attribute information is not always readily available to consumers. This is especially true for ethical attributes, such as labor practices, environmental friendliness, and so forth. Intuitively, it might be expected that consumers who would use an attribute in their decision making should seek attribute information, especially if it is easily obtainable. In three studies, the authors measure discrepancies between requests for available ethical attribute information and actual use of the same attribute in a conjoint task. In both between-subjects and within-subjects designs, the authors show that consumers (1) underrequest ethical attribute information and (2) are especially likely to show request/use inconsistency if they care about the underlying ethical issue. Negative emotions, especially the avoidance of anger, appear to drive this willful ignorance. These results add to the growing literature on avoidance mechanisms and consumer decision making and may shed light on when ethical attributes do (and do not) play a role in actual purchase behavior.

This research documents a systematic bias in memory for ethical attribute information: consumers have better memory for an ethical attribute when a product performs well on the attribute versus when a product performs poorly on the attribute. Because consumers want to avoid emotionally difficult ethical information (e.g., child labor) but believe they should remember it in order to do the right thing, the presence of negative ethical information in a choice or evaluation produces conflict between the want and should selves. Consumers resolve this conflict by letting the want self prevail and forgetting or misremembering the negative ethical information. A series of studies establishes the willfully ignorant memory effect, shows that it holds only for ethical attributes and not for other attributes, and provides process evidence that it is driven by consumers allowing the want self to prevail in order to avoid negative feelings associated with the conflict. We also ameliorate the effect by reducing the amount of pressure exerted by the should self. Lastly, we demonstrate that consumers judge forgetting negative ethical information as more morally acceptable than remembering but ignoring it, suggesting that willfully ignorant memory is a more morally acceptable form of coping with want/should conflict.

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