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 …