Additionally, a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience noted that even when people rate choices similarly, they choose the one that causes more activation in the caudate nucleus, a brain region involved with anticipating reward. No matter how much someone tries to be reasonable and rational, emotional impulses from different brain networks will try to tip the balance to influence our judgment.
But maybe there’s some wisdom in relying on our emotions for decision-making. In an experiment by Timothy Wilson, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, a group of college students were asked to rank the taste of five different kinds of jams. Wilson selected jams rated by Consumer Reports as the first, 11th, 24th, 32nd, and 44th best-tasting jams. In general, the preferences of the college students closely aligned with the preferences of the experts at Consumer Reports, agreeing on the best-tasting and worst-tasting jams. It was simple: Their brains were able to automatically pick out the product that provided them with the most pleasure.
However, Wilson repeated the same experiment with a separate group of college students, only this time, the students were asked to explain why exactly they preferred one brand over another. The students followed each jam-tasting with a questionnaire that forced them to analyze their first impressions and consciously detail their impulses. This resulted in the students ranking Consumer Reports’ two worst-tasting jams as their favorites. Wilson noted that there was virtually no relationship between the rankings of the experts to the opinions of the college students.
When we overthink a choice, we tend to overanalyze our options and lose site of what we really want. We focus on all sorts of variables that don’t actually matter, and our rational selves work to overrule our intuition, looking for a tangible reason to choose one option over the others.
Overanalyzing options and constant deliberating doesn’t just affect what goes atop of our morning toast. Recently, a growing body of research has focused on the limitations of our mental energy and found that problems that challenge our decision-making abilities will deplete our mental-energy reserve. While this decision-fatigue can be fostered by big decisions, small decisions, temptation, or choices, they all add up and flex our executive-function muscles in the brain.
At the Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University, director Angelika Dimoka used fMRI to measure the brain activity of volunteers recruited to participate in combinatorial auctions. This type of auction is a bidding war in which the challenge is to pay the lowest price for a combination of items, such as 100 landing slots at LAX. To avoid overpaying, the bidder has to consider multiple factors.
Dimoka found that as the amount of information the volunteers had to consider increased, so did the activity in their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dPFC), a region of the brain used in the decision-making process. However, as the bidders continued to take in information, the activity in the dPFC mirrored a circuit-breaker blowout. The volunteers reached cognitive and information overload, resulting in careless mistakes and poor choices, because the brain region responsible for intelligent decision-making had essentially checked out. Furthermore, their frustration and anxiety levels increased. Because these effects build on one another, “With too much information,” says Dimoka, “people’s decisions make less and less sense.”
When there’s an option for everything, when there are too many options, too much variety, or too much information coming at us, we suffer, we struggle and we lose sight of what makes us happy. The key is to learn to make good choices about the things that matter, while surrendering a bit of control on the things that don’t. We must agonize less, trust our gut more, and employ our energies when called for. The rest of the time — well, it may just be about being happy with good enough. After all, happiness is yours for the choosing.
I Can’t Decide: Quick Tips
While being overloaded with choices can have negative side effects — stress, anxiety, and decreased satisfaction — there are still major benefits to being able to choose among options. It’s just a matter of knowing how to navigate through excess choice.
- Prioritize. Decide what matters to you and what is important so you can better
decide when faced with a difficult choice. Avoid getting hung up on little things, and
instead focus your energy on significant decisions. Ask yourself, “One year from
now, will this choice matter?” - Be the satisficer, not the maximizer. As Schwartz asserts, maximizers
have a difficult time with choices because they’re always wondering if another
choice would have made them happier. Satisficers are less likely to spend time and
energy thinking about hypothetical alternatives to the decisions they made. They
develop their standards for what is “good enough,” so when faced with choices,
they can make a knowledgeable decision without looking back. - Make your decisions nonreversible. Research studies show that if we
buy something at a store with a no-refund policy, we are less likely to have regret
over our purchase. It’s the same with most decisions. If we are unable to change
our mind, we learn to accept and be happy with our choice. - Practice gratitude. By continuously comparing ourselves to others and imagining
better alternatives, we end up less satisfied with our decisions. Instead, focus
on the positives of your choices, and put a halt on the comparisons.
This article was first published in Brain World Magazine’s Fall 2012 issue.
More from Brain World
- Are You An “Explorer” When It Comes to Decision-Making?
- The Cost of Cosmetic Neurology: How the Increase of Neuroenhancing Drugs Create An Emotional Downfall
- How To Make The Hard Choices: An Interview with Dr. Ruth Chang
- Joy And How to Find It (Where You Might Be Overlooking)
- Know Your Brain: The Gustatory Cortex — How Taste Works
- You, Rewired: How New Technologies Can Impact Your Sense of Self
