Quotes About Decision-making

So to make the task of lowering expectations easier: Reduce the number of options you consider. Be a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Allow for serendipity.

As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize

KAHNEMAN AND TVERSKY HAVE USED THEIR RESEARCH ON FRAMING and its effects to construct a general explanation of how we go about evaluating options and making decisions. They call it prospect theory.

Now students are required to make choices about education that may affect them for the rest of their lives. And they are forced to make these choices at a point in their intellectual development when they may lack the resources to make them intelligently.

Notice that the curve falls steeply at the beginning and then gradually levels off. This reflects what might be called the "decreasing marginal disutility of losses.

choices are based upon expected utility. And once you have had experience with particular restaurants, CDs, or movies, future choices will be based upon what you remember about these past experiences, in other words, on their remembered utility.

Gawande reports that research has shown that patients commonly prefer to have others make their decisions for them. Though as many as 65 percent of people surveyed say that if they were to get cancer, they would want to choose their own treatment, in fact, among people who do get

Gawande reports that research has shown that patients commonly prefer to have others make their decisions for them. Though as many as 65 percent of people surveyed say that if they were to get cancer, they would want to choose their own treatment, in fact, among people who do get cancer, only 12 percent actually want to do so.

Bottom line—the options we consider usually suffer from comparison with other options.

I am not suggesting that we will always, or even frequently, be better off "going with our gut" when making choices. What I am suggesting is there are pitfalls to deciding after analyzing. My concern, given the research on trade-offs and opportunity costs, is that as the number of options goes up, the need to provide justifications for decisions also increases.

The research that my colleagues and I have done suggests that, not surprisingly, maximizers are prime candidates for depression.

I want a pair of jeans—32–28," I said. "Do you want them slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy?" she replied. "Do you want them stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed? Do you want them button-fly or zipper-fly? Do you want them faded or regular?" I was stunned. A moment or two later I sputtered out something like, "I just want regular jeans. You know, the kind that used to be the only kind.

The trouble was that with all these options available to me now, I was no longer sure that "regular" jeans were what I wanted. Perhaps the easy fit or the relaxed fit would be more comfortable.

you seek and accept only the best, you are a maximizer.

it's impossible to be a maximizer about everything. The trick is to learn to embrace and appreciate satisficing, to cultivate it in more and more aspects of life, rather than merely being resigned to it. Becoming a conscious, intentional satisficer makes comparison with how other people are doing less important. It makes regret less likely. In the complex, choice-saturated world we live in, it makes peace of mind possible.

Every choice we make is a testament to our autonomy, to our sense of self-determination.

From the perspective of a model of decision making that is future oriented, being sensitive to sunk costs is a mistake.

The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. A satisficer has criteria and standards. She searches until she finds an item that meets those standards, and at that point, she stops.

there is a cost to having an overload of choice.

have seen that two of the factors affecting regret are Personal responsibility for the result How easily an individual can imagine a counterfactual, better alternative

There are some strategies you can use to help you avoid the disappointment that comes from thinking about opportunity costs: Unless you're truly dissatisfied, stick with what you always buy. Don't be tempted by "new and improved." Don't "scratch" unless there's an "itch." And don't worry that if you do this, you'll miss out on all the new things the world has to offer.

When Nobel Prize–winning economist and psychologist Herbert Simon initially introduced the idea of "satisficing" in the 1950s, he suggested that when all the costs (in time, money, and anguish) involved in getting information about all the options are factored in, satisficing is, in fact, the maximizing strategy.

We can mitigate regret by Adopting the standards of a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Reducing the number of options we consider before making a decision. Practicing gratitude for what is good in a decision rather than focusing on our disappointments with what is bad.

Those who value freedom of choice and movement will tend to stay away from entangling relationships;