Yes, people are not motivated to look for knowledge that doesn't promise to support their existing point of view. But does that explain the pride in not knowing?
No, but it turns pride in not knowing into a special case of the more general pride in doing whatever it is I've decided to do anyway. And since the latter is observable in people in all kinds of areas, not just not-knowing, it makes it less likely that pride in not-knowing has a special explanation.
Sometimes I run into people that have rather strong opinions on some topic, and it turns out that they are basing them on quite shallow and biased information. They are aware that their knowledge is quite limited compared to mine, and they admit that they don't want to put in the effort needed to learn enough to level the field.
But that's not really a problem. What is bothering me is that, sometimes, that declaration of ignorance is expressed with some kind of pride.
This behaviour is noticeable on other levels too, in politics or in the sciences-humanities culture clash.
I came up with several hypotheses which might account for this:
Do you notice this behaviour too? What do you think causes it?
EDIT: formatting, style, grammar