Here's why too many choices overwhelm your brain

Do you still have trouble deciding what to order for lunch? According to the researchers, this is due to the phenomenon of overload of choice, which results from too many choices available for your brain. A study by Colin Camerer at the California Institute of Technology reveals new information about the overload of choice, including the parts of the brain that are responsible for it, and about the number of options that the brain actually prefers when it 's over. he chooses. As part of this study, images of picturesque landscapes that they could print on an article such as a cup of coffee were presented to the volunteers. Each participant has been offered a series of sets of images containing six, 12 or 24 images.

They were asked to make their decisions while a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine was recording activity in their brains. As a check, the volunteers were invited to browse the images again, but this time their selection of images was done randomly by a computer. FMRI scans revealed brain activity in two regions as participants made their choice: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), where the costs and potential benefits of decisions are weighed, said Camerer; and the striatum, a part of the brain responsible for determining value. Camerer and his colleagues also found that activity in these two regions was highest among subjects with 12 options to choose from, and the lowest among those with six or 24 items.

Camerer said that the business model probably resulted from the interaction of the striatum and ACC and balancing the growing reward potential (getting an image that they really like for their cup ) in relation to the increasing amount of work that the brain will have to do to evaluate the possibilities. the results. As the number of options increases, the potential reward increases, but then begins to stabilize due to diminishing returns.

"The idea is that the best out of 12 is probably pretty good, while the jump to the best out of 24 is not a big improvement," Camerer said. At the same time, the amount of effort required to evaluate the options increases. Together, the mental effort and the potential reward create a waiting ground where the reward is not too low and the effort is not too high. This trend was not observed when the subjects simply scanned the images as there was no reward potential, which required less effort when evaluating the options .

Camerer points out that 12 is not a magic number for human decision making, but rather an artifact of experimental design. He estimates that the ideal number of options for a person is probably between 8 and 15, depending on the perceived reward, the difficulty of evaluating the options and the individual characteristics of the person.

Of course, a visit to the nearest grocery store will probably reveal that many products come in well over a dozen varieties. There can be a variety of toothpastes of different brands, sizes, flavors, textures and properties, and in the condiment aisle you can choose from dozens of types of mustard. Camerer said that it was partly because people tended to feel freer and had more control over their lives when they had more options to choose from, even if all of these options ended up with them. anguish at the time of the decision. "Essentially, our eyes are bigger than our stomachs," he said. "When we think of the number of choices we want, we may not mentally represent the frustrations of decision-making."

(With ANI entries)