Information Avoidance: The Effect that Information Avoidance Plays on Activity Tracker Usage

Abstract

Information Avoidance is the act of purposefully avoiding information that could be deemed as unwanted by a person despite the information being good for them. People tend to avoid information they think will make them feel unwanted emotions, force an undesirable change to their lifestyle, or diminish their self-worth. This study tested whether people who wear activity trackers ever avoid information their tracker provides them. This study concluded that information avoidance is not a frequent occurrence among the respondents in the included sample. However, a few correlations that were found were: the more a person felt bad about negative results the more likely they were to avoid checking their tracker. People enjoy seeing good results better than negative results, so they are more inclined to not look at their tracker when they know the results will not be good. Lastly, many people felt satisfied or proud when they reached their goal, while people felt it not to be emotionally upsetting when they did not reach their goal. According to this study, people appear to be not be emotionally affected by negative information their activity tracker provides, so there is no reason for them to avoid the information. In the few cases where negative emotions were expressed toward negative tracker data, it was more likely the person would partake in information avoidance.