Decisions, Decisions

(picture borrowed from here)

Here's an interesting article about behaviour, choice, and inertia in human decision making. We’ve all been there. Maybe you were in line at Starbucks, or trying to choose a new phone plan. For me, I faced the problem of choice when I went shopping for cereal when I lived in the States a few years back. You’re confronted by an entire aisle (sometimes more) just for cereal, and you think…does anybody need this much choice? I mean seriously, with their being so much hunger and poverty in the world, how many varieties of corn flakes does the average Western consumer need? Or Cheez-its, for that matter. Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some Cheez-its. All day, son. They’re a solid, incredibly unhealthy yet satisfying junk food. But the last time I looked on the box, I noticed there were almost a dozen different varieties! And for what? 




On a grander scale, I can’t help but feel that the excessive burden of choice, often sold to us as a kind of freedom, instead traps us; we become incredibly particular, exacting individuals who either get *exactly* what we want, or we’re somehow dissatisfied. Other times, we just can’t process the level of choice and just go for the default option, such as the example of taxi tips in the story or how your parents will still use Internet Explorer as their default browser.

Some choice is good (of course), but I feel that there’s so much choice for absolutely everything that we do that it can end up having a detrimental impact.