If you’re like me, you may experience mild analysis paralysis when choosing what to order from an extensive menu.
I’m so indecisive that often the waiter has to come back a few minutes after taking everyone else’s order to finally hear mine.
Many of the options look good, but by trying to make sure I select the best of the best, I run the risk of missing something entirely.
Even before the internet brought unprecedented consumer choice directly into our homes and to the phones in the palms of our hands, choice was long seen as the driving force of capitalism.
Consumers’ ability to choose among competing providers of products and services dictates which companies thrive and which die, or at least that’s the long-held belief.
The competitive environment generated by consumer free choice supposedly drives innovation and efficiency, providing a better overall consumer experience.
However, more recent theorists have suggested that a greater variety of choices can induce a range of anxieties in consumers, from fear of missing out on a better opportunity, to loss of presence in a chosen activity (thinking “why am I doing this when I could be doing something else?”) and regretting having made the wrong choice.
The high expectations presented by a wide range of options can lead some consumers to feel that no experience is truly satisfying and others to experience analysis paralysis.
That more choices provide an inferior consumer experience and make potential customers less likely to complete a purchase is a hypothesis known as the “choice paradox.”
In fact, experiments on consumer behavior have suggested that an excess of choice can leave consumers feeling misinformed and indecisive when making a purchase decision.
The perfect is an enemy of the good
The idea, particularly in subjective matters, that there is a perfect solution to a problem is known as the “Nirvana fallacy.”
In reality, there may not be a solution that lives up to our idealized preconceptions.
When we stray a bit from the decision we’re trying to make, it’s usually clear that while there may be a better option, there will also be several good options that we’d be happy with.
Choosing an alternative that may not be the best, but is at least good enough, has been dubbed “satisfactory,” a portmanteau of “satisfactory” and “sufficient.”
As the Italian proverb that the French writer and philosopher Voltaire recorded in his “Philosophical Dictionary” says: “Il meglio è l’inimico del bene” – “The perfect is an enemy of the good”.
Fortunately, as I detail in my new book, How to expect the unexpected (which in Spanish would be “How to expect the unexpected”), randomness offers us an easy way to overcome choice-induced analysis paralysis.
When you are faced with a multitude of options, many of which you would be happy to accept, flipping a coin or letting a die decide for you may be the best option.
Sometimes making a good quick decision is better than making a perfect slow one, or even getting paralyzed in complete indecision.
When having difficulty choosing between multiple options, having a decision apparently made for you by a third-party gambling agent can help you focus on your true preference.
This “haphazard” strategy can help us foresee the consequences of what until then was an apparently abstract decision.
the power of chance
Recent experiments by a team of researchers at the University of Basel, Switzerland, have shown that a randomly dictated decision can help us deal with the information overload that often precipitates analysis paralysis.
After reading some basic background, three groups of participants were asked to make a preliminary decision on whether to fire or rehire a hypothetical store manager.
After forming an initial opinion, two of the three groups were told that because these decisions can be difficult to make, they would be aided by a single computer-generated coin toss.
The side the coin landed on would suggest whether to stick with your original decision (group 1) or default (group 2).
Participants were told that they could ignore the outcome of the coin toss if they wished.
The three groups were then asked if they wanted more information (an indicator of paralysis by analysis) or if they were happy to make their decision based on what they already knew.
Once those who requested more information received it, all participants were asked for their final decision.
Participants who were subjected to a coin toss were three times more likely to be satisfied with their original decision (not asking for more information) than those who had not been exposed to the random suggestion.
The random influence of the coin had helped them make a decision without the need for more time-consuming research.
Interestingly, requests for more information were lower when the coin suggested the opposite of the participant’s original decision than when it confirmed the participant’s first thoughts.
By being forced to take the opposite view, participants were more certain of their original choice than when the coin toss simply reinforced their first decision.
While many of us would be uncomfortable allowing a coin to dictate the direction of another person’s path, it is important to remember that it is not necessary to blindly follow the decision of chance.
The externally suggested option is designed to put you in the position of having to seriously consider accepting the specified option, but it does not force you to go one way or the other.
However, for those of us who struggle to make decisions, it’s comforting to know that when faced with a selection, we can pull out a coin and allow it to help us.
Even if we decide to reject the coin recipe, being forced to see both sides of the argument can often boost or speed up our decision-making process.
* Kit Yates is Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath and author of The Maths of Life and Death and How to Expect the Unexpected.
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