Ostrich effect

[3] An everyday example of the ostrich effect in a financial context is people avoiding checking their bank account balance after spending a lot of money.

[6] Banerjee & Zanella highlighted the ostrich effect in avoiding preventive screening, studying women working at a company to understand how a woman’s propensity to get annual mammograms changes after a co-worker is diagnosed with breast cancer.

However, surprisingly, in the presence of a co-worker diagnosed with breast cancer, women “spatially closer to her in the workplace” are 8% less likely to get a screening.

Research has found that when people feel uninformed about a pressing matter, they may exhibit the ostrich effect.

Those who read that energy depletion was an urgent problem and that oil would run out in 40 years were more likely to avoid learning about the issue.

[10] This statement shows that when confronted with information that contradicts their beliefs, individuals may experience cognitive dissonance and avoid seeking it to reduce discomfort.

The study found that higher loss aversion decreases the chance of the decision to do a preventive medical test.

[15] Demonstrating that the higher the loss aversion in an individual, the more likely they are to display the ostrich effect by avoiding information on diagnosis.

Instead, they saw that "investors increase their portfolio monitoring following both positive and daily negative market returns, behaving more like hyper-vigilant meerkats than head-in-the-sand ostriches".

[16] Sicherman et al. (2016) showed that the sample and demographic moderate the extent that investors exhibited the ostrich effect.