In our modern, affluent society, we constantly face multiple - even myriad - options to choose from, be it a career path or breakfast cereal. Of course we want to choose the best one for ourselves. But the analysis this requires isn't only extremely time-consuming, it's often impossible.
“The human mind just doesn’t have enough capacity to do that,” Valerie Reyna, a professor and co-director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research at Cornell University, says in a recent article by the Washington Post (WaPo) newspaper.
People often make decisions in one of two ways: maximizing or “satisficing” (a portmanteau term from "satisfy" and "suffice"), Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioural science and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, tells WaPo.
Maximizers strive to make the very best decision by carefully examining every option, she explains. Satisficers, on the other hand, make their choice once they've found something that simply meets their needs - is good enough, in other words.
According to research by Barry Schwartz, a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less,” maximizers are more prone to regret bad decisions, tend to be less satisfied with their lives, less optimistic and more depressed than satisficers.
The experts offer some guidelines on making decisions:
1. Don't rethink them: When you've made a decision, stick with it and make the best of it. If you think a decision is reversible, you're likely to reverse it.
2. Find a middle ground: While it's not good to be a maximizer, it's OK to maximize when it comes to things that are really important to you.
3. Don't sweat the small stuff: To reduce time spent on little, daily decisions, Reyna recommends making some of them automatic by having them hew to general policies you've made for yourself.
4. Set limits: If you tend to maximize, put constraints on yourself, says Thea Gallagher, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the academic medical centre NYU (New York University) Langone Health. For example, give yourself just 15 minutes to search for a certain item online, or have a go-to source when researching products.
5. Don't get bogged down in details: A big help in making better decisions, Reyna says, is an ability to get to the gist of information rather than spending a lot of time analysing surface details.
