And How The Brain Swoops In To Keep Us Safe
One day, you decide to buy ice cream at an ice cream parlour you haven’t been before. The parlour has 35 varieties of ice cream, most of which sound exotic and mysterious. You sample a few flavours and ultimately go with something that resembles your favourite bean, vanilla and chocolate. I mean, what can go wrong with vanilla and chocolate?
Even when we go into situations ready to explore something new and adventurous, we may default to options that we are familiar with.
Our brains like familiarity.
The brain’s main job is to keep us safe. So, in a new environment, when bombarded with so many choices, most of them new, the brain freezes. Every new choice seems risky, and how does the brain keep us safe?
Familiar things are easier for the brain to understand and recognise. This conserves precious mental energy. This also lets us be more relaxed and makes us feel calmer and safe.
So the brain scans the ice cream counter for familiar options, picks a familiar option, and off we go, satisfied, forgetting that we came into the new ice cream parlour to try something new.
This happens when we let our brain’s default mechanism take charge of our decisions.
In this particular example, we went to a new ice cream parlour. This overrode our default mechanism, but once inside the ice cream parlour and looking at so many new things, our brain’s safety mechanism kicked into gear and said, “Now, I will keep you safe.” This is your one ice cream in a month. We need to make sure you enjoy it, so it’s best to go with something familiar. Pick the bean vanilla and chocolate, and get the rainbow sprinkles, topped with some candied cherry.”
This can be observed when you are presented with too many choices. When your preferences are clear, in this case, bean vanilla and chocolate, you are able to make a decision.
But if this was a complex situation, like choosing ice cream options for your friends and your little nephew, you would first have to know their preferences and then be able to translate their preferences to match the 35 odd, mysterious ice cream flavours. Then, you would decide on the ice cream options and go home with the takeaway.
The odds are high that you would feel dissatisfied and uncomfortable in this scenario, making you want to bolt out of the ice cream store, find your familiar store, and order from the menu you are comfortable with.
This is known as the paradox of choice.
It occurs when having too many options can lead to a feeling of overwhelm and indecision. It happens under certain conditions when preferences are not clear, decisions are complex, and the cognitive load required to understand, assess, and make the decision amongst various choices is too high.
We either walk away not making a decision or not feeling very satisfied with our decision.
If you are unable to make a decision in a situation now, take a moment and reflect on these three steps.
- What is your intention with this decision? Describe this intention to yourself in a single sentence.
- What are your preferences? What is driving these preferences – a habit or your current needs?
- What are your true choice options after you have eliminated the ones you don’t want to pick?
