Choice Overload: 'I Can't Decide!'

Think about all the decisions we make in one day. Some of them are thrust upon us as part of modern life and others we actively seek for one reason or another. The number of choices that we encounter is staggering, from work, to food, to our social lives, to how many olives we prefer in our martini.

We make over 200 decisions related to eating per day, deciding upon not just what we eat, but where we eat, when we eat, and how we eat it. How many times have you stared at a menu while a “patient” waiter offered, “Do you need more time?” Even a menu can be overwhelming, yet whether it is cars, mattresses, or vacation destinations, we like to have as many options as possible. Starbucks advertises that there are 80,000 combinations of drinks to choose from. This clearly relates to all the different combinations of preferences for each drink, such as no foam, lots of foam, extra hot, not too hot, room for cream, no room for cream, and so on.

Even though we have no use for so many choices, marketers love to showcase them all. Rarely do you hear an ad for hot tubs or tires or whatever where the announcer says, “Come on down! We have limited options for you to choose from!” Freedom of choice is one of the hallmarks of a free society. Choice and control go hand in hand and can impact our overall well-being in significant ways. In exploring the impact of choice on the health outcomes of seniors in a nursing home, half of the participants in a study were told that they had the choice over how to arrange their furniture and where to socialize and watch movies, whereas the other half were told that the staff had the responsibility to make them happy and limited their choices. Those who were given more freedom of choice were happier and more engaged with other residents than the group who had limited options. A follow-up study by the same researchers found that the group that was given a higher sense of control had a 50% lower mortality rate over the next 18 months than those who had limited control.

We have evolved to where our survival instincts encourage us to have more choices, which will—whether rationally or not—make us feel in control of our ultimate outcome.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon coined the term “satisficing,” which is a combination of the words “satisfy” and “suffice.” In his theory of bounded rationality, Simon suggested that individuals do not seek to discover maximum benefit from a course of action. It is impossible to collect and comprehend all of the possible information necessary to make a decision. Satisficers have an internal threshold by which they make a decision, comparing available options to their needs and objectives. Once they discover an option that meets those needs and objectives, they select it. So essentially, satisficers make a decision based upon what is “good enough.” Maximizers, on the other hand, feel compelled to evaluate each possible option before deciding. It is usually impossible to comprehend all the possible options, let alone collect all the information, before making a decision. Maximizers also tend to experience more regret regarding their choices than satisficers. As more choices become available, the standards by which a maximizer views an option as acceptable tend to increase as well.

In likely the most famous study regarding choice, one set of customers at a market was presented with the option of 24 different jams and another set of customers at the same market was presented with just six different jams. Although the larger display with 24 jams garnered more initial interest, customers were 10 times less likely to select a jam with the larger display. Incidentally, those who bought a jar of jam from the choice of six were actually happier with their choice than those who bought from the choice of 24. When we are given more options, it can be difficult to evaluate each different one. It requires more time and cognitive effort. It also can lead to anxiety and worry about making an incorrect decision. More choice may cause us to reflect constantly upon the other options that were available to us. “I knew I should have selected the jam in the second row. Why didn’t I do that?!” Unlike situations when there are fewer options, more options make us second-guess the choice we made.

Choice overload occurs when an individual is overwhelmed by what appears to be similar options. We have difficulty making a decision as we consider potential outcomes as well as the risks associated with making an incorrect choice. A great deal of attention and energy is devoted to weighing the many aspects of each decision. Too many options can make it difficult for our brains to process all the information, evaluate it, and ultimately develop some sort of comparison. Think about how many times you have gone onto a website or into a store with the purpose of purchasing something and ended up deciding upon nothing because there were too many options. An inverted U model can best describe our ideal number of choices. Having no choices is not adequate for us, so as we progress up the U, we see our level of happiness with these choices increase. Our happiness descends as we have too many choices to consider, which creates some of this anxiety and paralysis.

The information age also gives us the ability to research any potential choice via technology. We have at our disposal a mountain of information that we can reference when deciding upon a college, automobile, or new neighborhood to live in. Each and every person who has made similar choices to ours has the ability to post their own experience with that decision, which can help us be better informed. The challenge of this mountain of information is that everyone—and I do mean everyone—can post their opinion. Many of those opinions are biased and uninformed. As Schwartz says in The Paradox of Choice, “The avalanche of electronic information we now face is such that in order to solve the problem of choosing from 200 brands of cereal or 5,000 mutual funds, we must first solve the problem of choosing from 10,000 websites offering to make us more informed consumers.” In order to make an informed choice, we have to sift through information from a variety of both reputable and not-so-reputable sources to determine what is reliable.

There are three things we can do to help with choice overload. First, we can put some parameters around the amount of time we are willing to spend on making a decision. “Decide that you are going to spend a day or a week on something and give yourself that time to collect enough information to make a choice and then make it.” There are choices where the search process in the role of a maximizer is fun, where you enjoy searching each and every option. People who love cars may take months to learn about different brands, test-drive them, and talk with friends and neighbors about possible options because it is a fun journey, particularly if you have someone else to share in it with you. Those processes are encouraged. However, if you have to select something a bit more mundane, you can create a timeframe for how much time and energy you will devote to the process and stick to it.

Our intuition can also be a powerful tool in helping us make good decisions. Our bodies can tell us things that our minds sometimes do not want to hear. Let the decision marinate over a certain amount of time, follow your gut, and ultimately decide.

Finally, be aware of the all-or-nothing type of thinking. For example, if you’re considering taking a new job, you may become overwhelmed with the potential consequences of a career move and start thinking about small things, like the new commute, to hypothetical scenarios like “Will I get along with my new boss?” or “What happens if the company where my new job is located goes bankrupt?” Most decisions are not permanent and forever. You make the decision and regardless of the outcome, you observe, you change, and you learn from it.

Decision-Making Essential Reads

Five Ways to Mistake-Proof Your Thinking

The Seven "Irrational" Habits of Highly Rational People

Finding credible sources to help make decisions can be invaluable. Product reviews from users and social media are great ways to learn more about the journey of others who made a similar choice, but it comes with challenges. In our process of making choices, we essentially must make choices about the sources of information we can trust, which will ultimately help us make our choice. This requires extra vigilance on our part to determine who and what can provide us with good information, which could include trusted friends, websites that offer unbiased and uncompensated reviews, and data from reliable sources. Whether we are a satisficer or a maximizer, choices can be tough. Knowing our options—and perhaps more importantly our own biases and thought processes—can help us to choose wisely.

Adapted from Numb: How the Information Age Dulls Our Senses and How We Can Get Them Back (2021).