Yes, You Can Trust Millennials to Make Good Choices

When you think about Millennials, even if you are one, what are some of the myths that first pop into your head? You’ve certainly heard the view that they’re poorer at managing in the real world, need help with basic life tasks, and can’t be trusted to commit to serving the needs of anyone but themselves. Several of these myths have already been debunked, but the life skills myth is still in need of examination.

Part of being a “grown-up,” most people would agree, is being able to make sensible decisions. Immature people constantly opt for poor choices. They don’t know how to invest wisely, can’t figure out how to set their priorities, and act impulsively. Millennials have been branded as inadequate in making life choices because they theoretically can only see things from a narrow point of view—primarily their own.

A new study presents strong evidence to the contrary regarding the myth of the inept Millennial. Ran Etgar of the Ruppin Academic Centre and Emanuel Tamir of the Ohalo Academic Institute for Education (2020) noted that much of the research on poor decision-makers several decades ago was conducted on prior generations who, unlike current Millennials, weren’t faced with as many choices on a daily basis. As the Israeli researchers note, “While it is hard to believe that basic human psychology and biases have changed during the few decades that passed since these experiments, one cannot ignore the fact that millennials are exposed to different stimuli and grow in a different society” (p. 374).

Before you come to the defense of previous generations (including, perhaps, your own), think about this statement for a moment. Before the era of the deluge of information or, as the authors refer to it, “plethora of opportunities,” there were far fewer potential alternatives for people to have to sift through than is the case now. Adults from prior generations certainly had to make daily decisions ranging from what to buy and who to invite for dinner. Now, however, the shopping decisions are essentially infinite, and the chances for socializing (real or virtual) have expanded through the availability of social media.

There may be times when you experience information overload yourself as a result of this exponential growth in the need to make choices. How many times while shopping online have you just pushed “add to cart” with a sigh of “whatever,” and shrug of your shoulders because you couldn’t stand to read one more review of the item? If you are a Millennial, you’ve grown up in this infinite choice world, but if you’re older, you’ve had to adapt.

Etgar and Tamir believe it’s time to revisit the old topic of bias in decision-making with this new generation of experts who’ve grown up in a world of endless options. The model of decision-making proposed by the authors to test their proposal is based on the “default choice” idea that “individuals tend to retreat to the status quo (when one is available) as decisions become more complicated” (p. 375). This would be fine if, in fact, the default was the better choice. However, the risk is that default choices lead to suboptimal outcomes.

The participants in the Israeli study were undergraduates representing the fields of engineering and education. The choices they were asked to make differed according to their majors, but in both cases, they were placed into one of two experimental groups representing a default vs. one or two options. The engineering students were asked whether an existing course for majors should be retained in the curriculum or whether that course should be swapped for other(s). A similar paradigm was used for education students.

According to the default choice theory of information overload, participants should be no more likely to stick with the current course than to advocate for the new course if there are just those two choices. However, add in that third choice, and people become driven back to the default choice out of a combination of confusion and a sense of comfort with the status quo.

Think about the study this way. Perhaps you’ve got a bathroom that definitely needs new towels (the status quo). You find one set you’d like to buy which clearly seems worth the investment. However, as you’re about to push that blinking red "purchase” button, the website shows you two very appealing options. Oh no! You have to revisit your choice! What should you do? According to the default choice theory, you’ll decide to forget the whole thing and stick with the towels you have, cancelling the order completely.

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The default choice theory leads to the most illogical conclusion if the status quo is really defective. If your towels are full of snags and spots that won’t come out anymore, sticking with them will be the poorer option. If there’s nothing wrong with them, it doesn’t matter if you switch or not. In the case of the students making the choices in the Israeli experiment, the question was whether they’d go running back to the status quo when they had two alternatives compared to when they had just one that was perfectly satisfactory.

As it turned out, the Millennials in the Etgar and Tamir data didn't show that default choice bias. When given two choices (default vs. alternative), the majority chose the alternative. When given three choices (default vs. two alternatives) they tended to be less likely to stick with the default as well. Both sets of students divided their preferences between the two alternatives, suggesting that they weren't overburdened by the cognitive load of the task.

The lack of a finding may mean simply that the method is flawed, but in the case of the Israeli study, there was a theoretical reason to expect that the current generation of young adults would be immune to the default choice effect. Indeed, as the authors conclude, the findings “are aligned with the assumptions of the classical theory of choice… that is based on the assumption of rational decision-making” (p. 378). Having grown up in the FOMO (fear of missing out) environment, Millennials are not made uncomfortable by being faced with a variety of choices and instead make their decisions based on what they perceive as the best alternative.

The authors also believe that the failure to replicate the earlier findings of the alternative choice experiment suggests that there’s nothing in the human genome that is choice-averse. Psychological biases, they argue, are largely acquired. In the words of the authors, “It is clear that we cannot take for granted that the biases researched and demonstrated in the 1990s and 2000s are valid for the generation Y (and Z) members” (p. 379).

To sum up, the Israeli study provides yet another reason not to write off the adult-like attributes of those in the Millennial generation. You might, instead, figure out how you can benefit from learning to cope with the multiple decisions you face in this ever-more complex world of choices.