A framework for blaming willful ignorance

Willful ignorance—the deliberate avoidance of knowledge—has profound implications for moral responsibility. Avoiding information about the consequences of one's actions challenges philosophical accounts of responsibility and legal culpability, raising questions about whether it should be treated like ordinary ignorance. Willful ignorance has recently attracted attention from psychology, particularly concerning how people attribute blame in such cases. In this paper, we review how people blame willfully ignorant agents and provide a theoretical framework that outlines several routes along which willful ignorance impacts blame. We propose three explanatory mechanisms for blame attributions to willful ignorance—epistemic, counterfactual, and personal inferences—review supporting evidence for these factors, and identify avenues for future research.