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...