Choose?
Associated Press recently ran an article on the paradox of choice. Bottom line: Cut the number of choices you make each day. Your brain will thank you!
We demand an abundance of choices so that we can pick the perfect set of clothes, the ideal Netflix show, the best car, the greatest home. Oh, and that heavenly soulmate.
But behavioral scientists say the increasing deluge of choices is melting your mind!
Said Barry Schwartz, emeritus psychology professor at Swarthmore University and author of The Paradox of Choice:
The idea that more choice is better is baked into Western culture, but research shows that having more options can make people anxious, indecisive and, paradoxically, less happy with what they pick. There have been hundreds of studies showing that there can be too much of a good thing. To minimize the mental noise, limit the number of choices you make, and your brain will thank you for it.”
In the case of Medicare Part D prescription drug plans, people in states with more choices were found less likely to choose any of them. And 401(k) investments. The more options a company had, the less likely employees were to sign up, even with matching money offered.
And that goes for less consequential choices, too. Shoppers at a gourmet grocery store bought more jars of artisanal jam when they were presented with 6 flavors rather than with a wider array of 24.
Schwartz again:
Instead of being liberated by all this choice, you’re paralyzed. You can do anything, and you can’t figure out which of those many things to do.”
So … you do nothing!
Noted Daniel Willingham, psychology professor at the University of Virginia:
Problem-solving requires more energy than relying on memory. When faced with a goal, whether it be an immediate need like responding to a threat or something longer term like finding shelter, the mind first searches for what’s worked before. The problem-solving part of the brain only kicks in afterward.”
And choice is problem-solving. More the choices, more the work the brain has to do. It ain’t happy!
Which might explain why Steve Jobs always wore a black mock turtleneck, Levi’s 501 jeans, and New Balance sneakers. It eliminated all this decision fatigue. By never having to think about what to wear in the morning, he preserved his mental energy for more critical decisions regarding product design and company operations. Issey Miyake, the famous Japanese minimalist designer, styled and produced those turtlenecks for Jobs. Walter Isaacson, Jobs’ biographer, found that the guy’s closet had roughly a 100 of these tops stacked together!
Even after you make a difficult choice, you have significant buyer’s remorse, as you ponder over those umpteen other choices of jam you could have picked. Maybe the other jar was better? You never get satisfaction!
Herbert Simon, a psychologist and 1978 Nobel laureate in economics, had three sets of clothes and ate nearly the same thing every day. Simon introduced the term “satisficing” = satisfying + sufficing. Wise!
Probably not a bad idea: autopilot-ize all the less important decisions of the day. Or find what a friend has/owns and is happy with. And pick that. I.e., outsourcing decisions!
And the best one to outsource decisions to?
Who, then, is the one who fears Yahweh?
He instructs him in the path he should choose.
His soul remains in goodness,
and his descendants possess the land.
The counsel of Yahweh is for those who fear Him,
and His covenant He makes them know.
Psalm 25:12–14
“Satisficed!”
SOURCE (of ideas, numbers, and words): Associated Press
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching. 