Are Choices Stressing You Out?

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I had an epiphany yesterday. Choices are giving me anxiety. I felt it coming; the increased heart rate and shortness of breath, clear signs of my growing stress. I was shopping for a frozen pizza. . . a plain. cheese. frozen. pizza. Did I want thin crust, ultra-thin crust, pan crust, rising crust, gluten-free crust, cauliflower crust? What? How about the cheese… 4-cheese, 3-cheese, dairy-free cheese, organic grass-fed cow cheese? There’s an Oprah pizza, a Paul Newman pizza, with herbs, without herbs…

 

THE CITY OF SAFEWAY

Way back when, when I first started adulting and doing my own grocery shopping, the grocery store was like a city and the sections like suburbs. I shopped in the City of Safeway where I visited the suburb of Produce, the suburb of Diary and the suburb of Condiments & Dressings. Life was good. I had time to be a bit social during my trip and, most importantly, I came home satisfied with my souvenirs. But then the revolution began.

There was an outbreak of choice and the suburbs expanded so large that they eventually became their own cities. Now I shop at the United Cities of Safeway. I have to navigate the City of Dairy which has the lactose-free suburb, the suburb of non-bovinity and a grass-only suburb. The City of Condiments & Dressings is now miles wide with several multi-cultural mini-burbs. Meanwhile, the City of Produce is deeply divided down party lines of organic vs chemically protected.

It’s stressful!

Do I need a passport? Should I pack an over-night bag? Is Bovine bad? What color IS cauliflower supposed to be? I’m so exhausted – is there a Starbucks in this store? I feel the need for a caramel macchiato. . . NOW!

 

DESTINED TO DISAPPOINT

I know choice is supposed to be a good thing – and certainly it was before the number of choices became equal to infinity. . . plus one. But there is such a thing as choice overload and one of the symptoms of this phenomenon is product dissatisfaction.

One of my all time favorite podcasts is Radio Lab and back in 2008 the two hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich did a fantastic hour-long show about CHOICE. At one point in the show, Jad and Robert head to a grocery store in Berkley, CA where they each choose an apple from the 20+ apple varieties available. Robert takes about 6 seconds to choose his apple; a Zazz apple, which he picked because he liked the name. Jad, shopped for his apple like I shopped for my pizza. After several minutes of contemplation, Jad narrowed down his choice to twelve apples which he analyzed by size, color, shape, price and perceived healthiness. Ultimately, he chose a giant “Korean Apple-Pear” because it was bigger and more expensive than Robert’s apple.

Afterwards, Jad and Robert did a taste test. Unanimously, the 6-second Zazz apple was significantly better than the “fake watermelon with an anus” pear-apple. Robert’s thrilled. Jad’s dissatisfied and bothered; wondering where his decision making went wrong.

Apparently, our brains can only deal with a few variables (choices) at a time – effectively. Basically, when there are too many variables in the decision making process, our pre-frontal cortex shorts out and we make an inferior decision or no decision at all (walking off to find a caramel macchiato). Eventually, when we ruminate over our decision (and we WILL ruminate), we are convinced we made the wrong choice. Enter . . .

BUYER’S REMORSE

 

CHOICE UP = WILLPOWER DOWN

So, we already know that all this decision making is 1) eating up valuable time and 2) sending us directly to destination disappointment, BUT there’s actually an even bigger consequence of having too many choices. Studies show, when our brain is tired and frazzled from over-analyzing, our willpower goes down the drain and we make really bad un-related choices. Yep, this is where the bag of maple-glazed donuts comes in.

 

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There’s a famous study (to those living in academia anyway) done by Baba Shiv, a Professor of Marketing at Stanford. In this experiment, several dozen college students are divided into two groups. Each student arrives independently in a room where they are told either a two digit or a seven digit number. The students are directed to walk down the hall and tell the number to the person in another room. As the student makes their way to the second room, they are offered either a bowl of fruit or a piece of cake as a thank you for participating in the study. Guess what?! The students with the seven digit number were twice as likely to take the cake over the bowl of fruit.

So what’s going on here?

Evidently, two bits of information are quite do-able for our brains but seven? Seven bits of information is enough to send us into cortex overload and throw our willpower out the window. On one hand, I’m thrilled to have a scapegoat for my inappropriate consumption of baked goods but on the other hand, I feel like a bit of a sucker, duped by roomfuls of marketing nerds and the United Cities of Safeway.

I mean, we’re trying to be good, right; to make good choices, manage our time and use our willpower to abstain from unhealthy things. But, behind the scenes they’re making bets to see how long we can stare at the yogurt aisle and whether it will be a random bag of donuts or a check-out lane candy bar that consoles us. Hmmmm, I think I smell a rat.

So let’s see how all this information plays out in relation to my trip to the frozen suburb of pizza. It took me about 12 minutes to compare all my options and choose my frozen pizza. Afterwards, I felt tired and stressed which made me vulnerable to the soft, sweet song of the donut. For a split second my willpower said, “no, you don’t need that donut. You’ll spoil your dinner.” for which my overstressed cortex replied, ” ME WANT DONUT.”

Furthermore, after I eat that frozen pizza, statistics say I’ll sit back in my chair, wipe the last bit of over-processed tomato sauce from the corner of my mouth and think, “That was not a good pizza. I bet there was a better one…maybe the Oprah pizza? No, that was $9; too expensive for a frozen pizza. I wonder if the cauliflower crust tastes better than cardboard? I could have . . . should have . . .”

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 Hey Lovelies

Are you feeling over-whelmed with all the choices available to us today? Do you spend valuable time deciding on an outfit or book or television show? What about creatively – have you ever ended up with no time to actually do a project because there were just too many to consider?

Most importantly, do you eat cake, donuts or drink caramel macchiatos?

If you answered yes to ANY of these questions, you must tune in next week for FIVE WAYS TO REDUCE CHOICE FATIGUE. Really darling, you must.

Have a wonderful weekend.

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