Choice Overload: Here’s What You Should Do When You Have Too Many Options

Have you experienced standing in front of a vending machine containing more than 30 different choices and you don't know what exactly to choose?

A new study entitled, "Uncovering the computational mechanisms underlying many-alternative choice," published in eLife, using eye-tracking technology proposes that the amount of time an individual is spending looking at individual items may in fact, help them decide.

Results showed that people had the tendency to choose snacks they spent more time looking at, at times, even over snacks that they are said to have rated more highly.

According to co-author of the study, Ian Krajbich, also The Ohio State University psychology and economics associate professor, they could do pretty well predicting what people would pick according to just their ratings of snacks available for them.

Nevertheless, the associate professor explained, the amount of time, people are spending looking at individual products is not the entire story of how they decide when they are faced with many alternatives. Krajbich added, "it is a little more complicated than that."

Research Involving 49 People

Krajbich conducted the research with lead author, Technische Universität Berlin's Armin Thomas and Freie Universität Berlin's Felix Molter.

It involved 49 participants who reported they were snack food enthusiasts and agreed to undergo fasting for at least four hours prior to the study, to guarantee the task was applicable to them.

Through a computer monitor, the study participants were presented with sets of nine, 16, 25, or 36 different snack foods. They were asked to pick which snack they would like to eat the most towards the experiment's conclusion.

The participants did this several times over the course of the investigation. An eye tracker recorded exactly where they were looking while they made their choices.

Medical Xpress reported that after the experiments, volunteers rated how much they liked the snacks, 80 in all, that were presented to them as part of the study.

The study findings showed that participants did not look carefully at all the items prior to making the choice, or even just look at each item until they found one of their most-liked snacks.

Instead, the volunteers looked around in a manner that at an initial glance, appeared random, although relied on the items' physical location, as well as how much they were liked.

Krajbich explained, there is this peripheral screening process where individuals learn to avoid even directly looking at the snacks they do not really like.

The co-author added this is not something that they see in research where participants are presented with just two alternatives. It only happens when they have too many choices.

The 'Satisficing' Strategy

One of the leading concepts among researchers is that when people are given too many choices, they scan them until they finally find something 'good enough.' In this case, Krajbich said, a snack they will enjoy whether it is their favorite or not.

That's not what happened though, they continued. If this so-called 'satisficing' model described in Investopedia as a decision-making strategy were true, people would stop looking the moment they found a snack that was quite good enough.

However, the study found that participants opted for the last snack they looked at just about 45 percent of the time.

How Choices are Made

What appeared to happen most frequently is that, people would look through items, frequently going back and forth in-between, until an item stood out among the rest, frequently, the snack they looked at the most.

People made a choice, said Krajbich when they concluded the best choice was adequately better than the next-best choice.

Where the snacks appeared in the display, side-to-side, up and down, did not play much of a role in the decision-making of people.

Participants frequently started to search in the display's top left, then, looked from left to right, top to bottom, although only to a limited extent.

Pretty fast, elaborated the study's co-author, their attention gets drawn to their higher-value choices that impacts their quest process, and their gaze begins jumping around less predictably.

Related information about choice overload is shown on Time Management and Productivity's YouTube video below:

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