0000000000070869
AUTHOR
Iyengar S S
How much choice is "good enough"? Moderators of information and choice overload
In today’s world, people face an abundance of information and a great number of choices both in important domains, such as health care, retirement, and education, and in less important domains, such as the choice of breakfast cereal or chocolate. Choice overload and information overload have strong negative effects on many important decision- making aspects such as processing and using information, the motivation to act, the quality of choices, and post- choice feelings, which are discussed in Chapter 43 in this volume in more detail. However, small choice and information sets are not always optimal either. Several variables– – such as information usage, decision accuracy, motivation to cho…
Cognitive and Affective Consequences of Information and Choice Overload
When interviewed in 1992 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon described a paradox at the heart of living in an economy that made every effort to design and produce ever more “choice alternatives” but that simultaneously allocated very little energy to encouraging people to devote the attention and time actually required to choose. He gave the example of a decision to buy a new house, commenting: “Before you even start the choice process, somebody has presented you with this, and this, and this house” (UBS, 1992). The overabundance of alternatives was lamented by Simon in 1992, when computing power was slower. It is all the more alarming in the modern and constantly …