Present-day Indecisiveness: Why More is Less

This article is part of the series Power to the Individual . It is a series in which important challenges for the individual in present-day society are addressed.

Choices, Choices, Choices. In Feburary, I started the process of deciding what master’s degree I want to pursue after my bachelor studies. Six months, many job tests, and a whole lot of master descriptions later, I still haven’t decided yet. Luckily, I am not alone. Many students and scholars experience the problem of choosing what to do with their lives. There is currently a generation of generalists that does not know what to choose and that is too fearful to narrow down to a specific occupation. This made me wonder: what is it in our current society that seems to be making so many of us dissatisfied about our decision-making process and so incredibly indecisive?

Our problem with choosing is one that typically belongs to the 21st century. Decades ago, people did not have difficulties with choosing as there was much less to choose from. Back then, people demanded more individual freedom and freedom of choice. Companies acted on this demand by starting a ‘variety revolution’ in which they offered more personalised products and more choice. The proliferation of choice extended well beyond product offer in stores. People also became less connected to family, civic associations, faith communities, and the like. As a result, less citizens were constrained by the rules and obligations that were imposed on them by these connections. What’s more, the social mobility in Western and Nordic countries showed a significant increase at the end of the 20th century. This combination of more options, less rules, and higher social mobility resulted in the beloved effects which our forebears strived for: higher autonomy as choices better reflect one’s own personality, better fulfilment of the desire for novelty and change, and increased intrinsic motivation.

Despite the realized positive effects, the increase in freedom in designing one’s life now comes with unexpected consequences. Presently, we have come to a moment in time where we can get what we want but we are finding out that what we want does not satisfy us. Although the abundance in options has resulted in better objective results (our specific desires are more satisfactorily fulfilled), the subjective results (our experience) of our decisions have worsened. We tend to feel less satisfied with both the decision-making process as well as the decision that follows from it. What’s more, the ease with which we make decisions has steadily declined. 

Option Overload

A first explanation for the lower subjective results of our decisions is given by Mark Lepper, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. He found out that a high number of options, that is often offered to us, has negative effects on both the experience of the decision-making process as well as the results of it. Researchers have shown that an option overload causes people to experience more frustration and have a lower confidence in their decisions. 

Individualism

Secondly, on-going societal developments that started in the past have made a contribution to the present-day experienced difficulty in making important decisions. The figure below gives an indication of the increase in Dutch citizens that do not have a religious affiliation. As many people moved away from traditional communities, such as churches, close family bonds, and social organisations, we have become more individualized creatures. Individualistic culture has a severe effect on our decision-making process as it promotes both individual control as well as individual responsibility. If you succeed in life, you can pat yourself on the back for it. Yet, if you fail, individualistic culture makes you think that it is you and only you who is responsible for your own failure! This dangerous, individualistic mindset makes us much more hesitant to make a decision and yields more insecurity about the decisions that we dare to make. 

Maximizers vs. Satisficers

Furthermore, the more freedom we are given in designing our own lives, the higher our (unrealistic) expectations regarding the outcome of our choices. This behaviour was first documented by Herbert A. Simon who made a distinction between maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers always try to maximize the utility of their decisions by considering all possible alternatives one can imagine. Satisficers also have criteria and standards, but a satisficer is not concerned about the possibility that there might be something better. In this 21st century, many of us have become maximizers with high expectations of our choices. We demand our work and study to be challenging, socially valuable, and rewarding. Our relationships have to be passionate, intellectually stimulating, and comforting. We simply don’t want to settle for ‘good enough’. Yet, Simon found in his research that satisficers experience less regret and show higher levels of happiness and self-esteem. To improve our decision-making we should come to the understanding that satisficing is the ‘maximizing strategy’.

One of the main drivers of our maximizing behaviour is the omnipresence of marketed content and advertisements in our daily life. Advertisements make you think that satisficing behaviour is ‘not good enough’ as ads are aimed to promote a product that is always ‘newer’, ‘better’, ‘faster’. As a result, virtually every consumption (and choice) experience is less satisfying than one expects it to be. 

What to do?

Today, we are free to be the authors of our own lives but due to more options, higher individualism, higher expectations of our choices, and the fostering of maximizing behaviour by ads we have the faintest idea on what sort of life we want to ‘write’. Strikingly, we have never been explicitly educated how to deal with these difficulties and the immense control we now have over our lives. What can we do to make our decision-making process less daunting?

Sense of Self

Firstly, the difficult situational factors urge us to develop a clearer sense of self. For important life decisions, we shouldn’t directly dive into the pile of options that is offered to us. Instead, we should start with inner exploration in order to reduce our preference uncertainty. We can often know much more about our own preferences than we actually do. Through retrospection we can identify the things in life that resonated most with us. After identification of some interesting activities, we further need to investigate what part of these activities makes them so interesting, perhaps there are similarities between these activities. Then, with explicitly articulated preferences and personal criteria, you can quickly narrow down the large set of options that is offered. You will even start to enjoy a large range of options as your more specific preferences are better satisfied by highly personalised products. Hence, by better defining ourselves and thus our preferences, we can much better deal with a choice overload and be less insecure about the choices that we make! 

Satisficing

Additionally, our ability to make decisions should be regarded as a limited daily resource. Decision-making is an exhaustive process. The more important decisions we make on a day, the worse the quality of our decisions. This pushes us to embrace and appreciate satisficing behaviour more often. Ask yourself what decisions in life are worth maximizing and with what decisions you can settle for ‘good enough’. Does it really matter what Netflix-series you are going to watch, what you eat for dinner, or what clothes you wear today? Relieve the mind and satisfice for these decisions. This gives you so much more space for important decisions that you do want to maximize, such as your choice of master’s degree!

By developing a stronger sense of self and being a satisficer more often, we are able to be more confident and satisfied with our decisions in this ‘era of choice’.

Do you often try to maximize your decisions? How do you deal with difficult decisions? Is there a prancing question you would like to see answered in the series 'Power to the Individual'? Please note your answers down in the comment section below.