How heads or tails can lead to better decisions | Science and health

If you’re like me, you may experience a slight paralysis when deciding what to choose from an extensive menu.

I am so indecisive that the waiter often has to come back a few minutes after taking everyone’s order to finally hear my order. Many options sound good, but in trying to make sure I make the best decision, I risk leaving with nothing.

Even before the Internet offered us unprecedented consumer choice, choice was seen as the driving force of capitalism.

Consumers’ ability to choose between competing providers of products and services determines which companies thrive and which fail – that is the belief.

The competitive environment created by consumers’ free choice is supposed to stimulate innovation and efficiency, and provide a better overall consumer experience.

However, more recent theorists have suggested that increased choice can lead to a range of fears in consumers – such as fear of missing out on a better opportunity, missing out on an activity (thinking “Why would I do this when I could have done something else?”) and choice regret. wrong.

The heightened expectations offered by a wide range of choices can lead to some consumers feeling that no experience is truly satisfying, and to others that they are paralyzed.

Having more choices provides a worse consumption experience and makes customers less likely to complete a purchase is a hypothesis known as the “paradox of choice”.

Indeed, experiments on consumer behavior have indicated that over-choice can leave consumers uninformed and indecisive when making a purchase decision.

The best is the enemy of the good

The idea, especially in subjective matters, that there is an ideal solution to a problem is known as the “Nirvana Fallacy”.

In fact, there may not be a solution that matches our expectations.

When we step back a little from the decision we are trying to make, it is usually clear that although there may be a better option, there will also be a number of good choices with which we will be satisfied.

Choosing an alternative that may not be the best but is at least good enough has been called “satisfactory” – a combination of “satisfactory” and “adequate”.

As the Italian proverb recorded by the French writer and philosopher Voltaire in his Philosophical Dictionary says: “Il meglio è l’inimico del bene” – “the great is the enemy of the good”.

Fortunately, as I detail in my new book – How to Expect the Unexpected – Randomness offers a simple way to overcome choice paralysis.

When faced with a myriad of choices, many of which you would be happy to accept, tossing a coin or letting the dice decide for you might be the best option.

Sometimes making a good decision quickly is better than making a slow and perfect decision, or even staying in a state of complete indecision.

When you’re having a hard time choosing between multiple options, having the decision seemingly made by an external randomizer can help you focus on your true preferences.

This “random” strategy can help us glimpse the consequences of what until then was an apparently abstract decision.

Recent research by a team from the University of Basel, Switzerland, shows that a randomly dictated decision can help us deal with information overload that often leads to paralysis.

After reading some background information, three groups of participants were asked to make an initial decision about firing or rehiring a hypothetical store manager.

After forming an initial opinion, two of the three groups were told that since these decisions were difficult to make, they would be assisted by a single computer-generated coin toss.

The side on which the coin lands indicates whether the person should keep their original decision (set 1) or change it (set 2). Participants were told they could ignore the coin toss if they wanted to.

The three groups were then asked if they would like more information (an indication of analysis paralysis) or if they were happy to have made their decision based on what they already knew.

After it was given to those who asked for more information, all participants were asked about their final decision.

Participants who were exposed to the coin toss were three times more likely to be satisfied with their original decision – not to ask for more information – than those who were not exposed to the action.

The coin helped them make up their minds without the need for more time-consuming research.

Interestingly, requests for more information were less frequent when the coin suggested reversing the participant’s original decision than when it confirmed their first thoughts.

Being forced to consider the opposite point of view made the participants more certain of their original choice than when the coin reinforced their first decision.

While many of us don’t feel comfortable letting one currency dictate someone else’s career direction, it’s important to remember that you are under no obligation to blindly follow their decision.

The proposed choice is designed to put you in a position of forcing you to seriously consider accepting that choice, but not to force you to make a decision one way or the other.

However, for those of us who struggle with making decisions, it is comforting to know that when we are faced with a choice, we can pick up a coin and let it help us.

Even if we decide to reject the currency option, having to see both sides of an argument can often jump-start or speed up our decision-making process.