Why do we squander so much mental energy on the mundane purchases of everyday life? Jonah Lehrer thinks he’s found a good answer:
I recently stumbled upon a working paper, “Decision Quicksand: When Trivial Choices Suck Us In,” by Aner Sela (University of Florida) and Jonah Berger (Penn). Their hypothesis is that my wasted deliberation in the drugstore is a metacognitive mistake. Instead of realizing that picking a floss is an easy decision, I confuse the array of options and excess of information with importance, which then leads my brain to conclude that this decision is worth lots of time and attention. Call it the drug store heuristic: A cluttered store shelf leads us to automatically assume that a choice must really matter, even if it doesn’t. (After all, why else would there be so many alternatives?)
Sela and Berger conducted a number of experiments:
In one test, they gave people a selection of airline flight options. One group was given these options in a small, low-contrast font (high-difficulty condition) while a second group was given the same options in a larger, high contrast font (low-difficulty condition). Not surprisingly, the hard-to-read font led to increased deliberation time, as people were forced to decipher their alternatives. What was more interesting is that this extra effort led to perceptions of increased importance: The flight options now seemed like a weighty decision with profound consequences. (This effect was especially pronounced when people were led to believe that the choice of flights was actually unimportant.)
Like quicksand, these trivial decisions suck you in the more you struggle.
This reminds me of a paradox — the name escapes me — whereby the less difference there is between two options, the more expensive it is to gather the information to choose the better option. Anyone remember what it’s called?
Therein lies the joy of Costco — they don’t overwhelm you with tons of choices with few marginal differences between them. Wide open spaces to find what you’re looking for and only a few choices per product, and normally only wherein a meaningful difference exists.
And they have an excellent wine section — just past the tires.
You may be thinking of the paradox of choice and the contrast between maximizing and satisficing.