53
DECIDE BETTER – DECIDE LESS
Decision Fatigue
For weeks, you’ve been working to the point of exhaustion on this presentation.
The PowerPoint slides are polished. Each figure in Excel is indisputable. The
pitch is a paradigm of crystal-clear logic.
Everything depends on your
presentation. If you get the green light from the CEO, you’re on your way to a
corner office. If the presentation flops, you’re on your way to the unemployment
office. The CEO’s assistant proposes the following times for the presentation:
8.00a.m., 11.30a.m. or 6.00p.m. Which slot do you choose?
The psychologist Roy Baumeister and his collaborator
Jean Twenge once
covered a table with hundreds of inexpensive items – from tennis balls and
candles to T-shirts, chewing gum and Coke cans.
He divided his students into
two groups. The first group he labelled ‘deciders’, the second ‘non-deciders’. He
told the first group: ‘I’m going to show you sets containing two random items and
each time you have to decide which you prefer. At the end of the experiment I’ll
give you one item you can take home.’ They were led to believe that their choices
would influence which item they got to keep. To the second group, he said: ‘Write
down what you think about each item, and I’ll pick one and give it to you at the
end.’ Immediately thereafter, he asked each student to put their hand in ice-cold
water and hold it there for as long as possible. In psychology, this is a classic
method to measure
willpower or self-discipline; if you have little or none, you
yank your hand back out of the water very quickly. The result: the deciders pulled
their hands out of the icy water much sooner than the non-deciders did. The
intensive decision-making had drained their willpower – an effect confirmed in
many other experiments.
Making decisions is exhausting. Anyone who has ever configured a laptop
online or researched a long trip – flight, hotels, activities, restaurants, weather –
knows this well:
after all the comparing, considering and choosing, you are
exhausted. Science calls this
decision fatigue
.
Decision fatigue
is perilous: as a consumer, you become more susceptible to
advertising messages and impulse buys.
As a decision-maker, you are more
prone to erotic seduction. Willpower is like a battery. After a while it runs out and
needs to be recharged. How do you do this? By taking a break,
relaxing and
eating something. Willpower plummets to zero if your blood sugar falls too low.
IKEA knows this only too well. On the trek through its maze-like display areas and
towering warehouse shelves,
decision fatigue
sets in. For this reason, its
restaurants are located right in the middle of the stores. The company is willing to
sacrifice some of its profit margin so that you can
top up your blood sugar on
Swedish treats before resuming your hunt for the perfect candlesticks.
Four prisoners in an Israeli jail petitioned the court for early release. Case 1
(scheduled for 8.50a.m.): an Arab sentenced to 30 months in prison for fraud.
Case 2 (scheduled for 1.27p.m.): a Jew sentenced to 16 months for assault. Case
3 (scheduled for 3.10p.m.): a Jew sentenced to 16 months for assault. Case 4
(scheduled for 4.35p.m.): an Arab sentenced to 30 months for fraud. How did the
judges decide? More significant than the detainees’ allegiance or the severity of
their crimes was the judges’
decision fatigue
. The judges granted requests 1 and
2 because their blood sugar was still high (from breakfast or lunch). However,
they struck out applications 3 and 4 because they could not summon enough
energy to risk the consequences of an early release. They took the easy option
(the status quo) and the men remained in jail. A study of hundreds of verdicts
shows
that within a session, the percentage of ‘courageous’ judicial decisions
gradually drops from 65% to almost zero, and after a recess, returns to 65%. So
much for the careful deliberations of Lady Justice. But, as long as you have no
upcoming trials, all is not lost: you now know when to present your project to the
CEO.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
