Decision fatigue

[firecat]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue? by JOHN TIERNEY

Long article. Summary excerpt:

The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice.

I'm going to summarize the results of several studies mentioned in the article. I don't know whether they were good studies or whether the results also apply outside the experimental conditions.

• Parole boards are more likely to grant parole earlier in the day. (This is an example of the second shortcut described in the excerpt: Do nothing.)
• Avoiding temptation (or exercising self-control) causes fatigue and leaves a person less likely to avoid other temptations in the near future or more likely to give up on difficult tasks.
• Having to make a series of choices causes the same thing.
• Decision-making is more fatiguing than mental effort spent on studying information or following directions.
• If you are making a series of complex choices such as configuring a car to purchase, you are more likely to going with whatever is presented as the "default" later in the process. If the first set of choices is especially complex, for example, picking among 50 different suit fabrics for a bespoke suit, you'll start going for defaults sooner.
• Choice-making fatigue is worse when you have to consider tradeoffs, such as whether you can afford to purchase a staple at a discount. This means poor people are more likely to be in a state of decision fatigue.
• Consuming something sugary mitigates the effects of decision fatigue, whereas experiencing pleasure does not. This is true for dogs as well as humans.
• Sugar combats decision fatigue because the activity of the brain changes when it is low on glucose.
• Parole boards are more likely to grant parole immediately after a meal.
• People spend 3-4 hours a day exercising self-control.
• Desires for relaxing and goofing off are harder to resist than other desires.
• People do best at decision-making if they understand that decision-making ability fluctuates and gets depleted, and structure their life to avoid making too many decisions and avoid making decisions late in the day.

A lot of nitpicking can be done about this article, especially the way it conflates decision-making and what it calls "avoiding temptation" (which is not well-defined). Overall I think it's getting at something real.

But having read all this, what I don't understand is, if this is true, why are choices seemingly continually increasing? Why are there 50 different suit fabrics if it makes people tired and cranky to decide among them?

Comments

[jiawen]

"...why are choices seemingly continually increasing?"

I think it's largely because those choices have always existed, but our ability to actually avail ourselves of them -- information through the internet, goods shipped from across the world, etc. -- has increased steadily.

[jazzfish]

why are choices seemingly continually increasing?

Because everyone thinks that having more choices is better because it means you have a better chance of getting closer to exactly what you want. Decision fatigue is counterintuitive to decades of programming, and to millennia of actually not having enough choices.

(I'm happy to see that sugar actually does something to combat 'decision fatigue.' Now I feel a bit better about buying cookies in the middle of the afternoon so I can finish the workday.)

[bcholmes]

If one of the shortcuts is to become reckless, then you buy more stuff.

[evilawyer]

That's what I was going to say. You get the illusion of having control because you have more to choose from, but you really go wild and end up spending more than you would have because you're buying more impulsively.

[sasha_feather]

WOW. Thanks for posting this. I have thought about this some in other contexts but not explicitly. When I took a year off work, it was largely due to fatigue, and I basically made very few decisions while I let my brain rest and work on stuff.

I've heard of people who choose to follow strict religious laws finding it "restful" because it means they have to make fewer decisions (about what to wear, what to eat, etc), and therefore can concentrate on more important things.

As for suit choices: Sometimes so many choices can be liberating, sometimes it can be fun. Those of us who are into fashion often find it so. But I haven't always been into fashion, and I can see the appeal of uniforms or standard ways of dressing (such as men's suits) sometimes.

[bcholmes]

Thanks for this post.

I'm reminded of the book, The Paradox of Choice, which covers similar ground.

[ursula]

If you are SELLING suits, then putting the 50 fabrics first makes tons of sense, because you can put the expensive tailoring choices later and nobody will care any more.

[sasha_feather]

Befuddling the buyer makes economic sense-- if you can talk her into anything, she will spend more money, as BC mentioned above. The reckless factor.

[zeborah]

I, however, go the other route mentioned, of avoiding making decisions at all. If I go shopping when hungry, I can walk through a whole supermarket and come out with nothing at all. Which doesn't help....

I'm making a big mental note about the fact that sugar helps - next time I have to go shopping when hungry, I'll go in just for some lollies, eat them, and then go back in for the actual shopping. --Similarly when I go clothes shopping etc next.

[mswyrr]

I, however, go the other route mentioned, of avoiding making decisions at all. If I go shopping when hungry, I can walk through a whole supermarket and come out with nothing at all. Which doesn't help....

The sales trick backfires with me the same way. The more a salesperson tries to bog me down with confusing options and multiple pricing plans on a car or whatever, the more likely I am to freeze up and flee ASAP.

[mswyrr]

This articulates something that seems very true of my experience. The more decisions I have to make, the harder it is to avoid just closeting myself away with my computer and listening to music/reading fic for hours. I've been doing that re: applying to grad schools, unfortunately. Hopefully thinking of things in these terms (and giving myself a boost of fruit juice for the sugar!) will help me get my brain to work at the problem.

[adrian_turtle]

See also, dieting. When a person faces 20 decisions before breakfast, she's made a good start on using up her decision-making ability for the whole day. Making a plan in advance can provide some protection, but actively resisting temptation contrary to the plan still uses up some of the same resources.

She plans to wake up early, drink black coffee with artificial sweetener, work out for half an hour, eat diet cereal, feed her children a healthy breakfast, and go to work. She resists temptation to sleep late, drink pop, put cream in her coffee, put sugar in her coffee, stop her workout in the middle and read a novel, eat cold pizza instead of diet cereal, slice a banana onto her cereal, let the children have hot chocolate...

[firecat]

The article also discusses calorie restriction dieting in the context of "sufficient glucose in the brain helps avoid decision fatigue, but calorie restriction depletes it, catch-22." (The article doesn't use "calorie restriction," it uses "dieting," but that's what they meant.)

[laughingrat]

Oh wow, that is really interesting. And it explains why I really am terrible at collection development if I work on it for too long. (Fortunately, I can sort of tell when I'm getting reckless and know to stop.)

[cleverthylacine]

I'm suspicious of the recent trend in the media to highlight this, because it seems like the more authoritarian and fearful our culture becomes, the more people are interested in this research. None of this information is all that new; what's new is that suddenly people want to pay more attention to this information.

Here's the thing. People are very different, and having a wide variety of options available is a very good thing for that reason. What's not good is the way that this is handled. For instance, if you go to a good tailor, and you tell them how much money you have to spend, and they take a look at your colouring and get a sense of your style, they will not show you 50 fabrics. They will show you 10 or 11 fabrics in your price range that won't make you look like a badly boiled egg. What's confusing is when, in order to make more money, the people whose job it is to advise you are removed from the equation and you're left to look at all 50 fabrics on a monitor screen.

If you watch Say Yes to The Dress, you see that in a bridal salon, there may be 1000s of dresses, but they only show a client about 5 and they get seriously annoyed when the family/friends start pulling out stuff. This isn't because they're big meanies, it's because family/friends are going on how the dress looks, and the bridal salon attendants are considering whether the dress will flatter the client's body shape, whether the colour will flatter the client's skin, what the client's expressed price range is, and whether the dress comes in their size. (There was an issue on that show where the father had pulled out a dress that the bride loved, but it didn't come in size 26, and another one where the mom had pulled out this gorgeous dress that the bride loved, but it cost $10000, that they didn't have, and seeing it just made the bride unhappy with everything she had liked before that she could afford.)

Everyone wants to say that choices are the problem, when the actual problem is:

1) we don't train people to use logic and make choices in school, which increases decision fatigue.

2) we are forever increasing the age of adulthood and lengthening the time we spend parenting and the time that people in privileged classes are allowed to get off scott free for bad behaviour because they're 'kids', which trains people not to make decisions at all and not to make good ones when they do, which increases decision fatigue.

3) advertising and the internet increase decision fatigue by making people aware of "choices" that are not really choices at all. For instance, things that you can't actually afford aren't choices. Things that come in another country may not be choices either. I stupidly overspent on an item from Japan when I could have bought it locally because I wanted the bigger version. If I hadn't known the bigger version existed I'd probably have been happy with the smaller one and spent about $70 less. As it was I agonised over the decision for weeks and am happy with the one I got in large part because of the relief I felt--and this was nothing hugely life altering, it was a Japanese designer bag that I loved.

4) after we spend 18 years teaching you not to make good decisions, not teaching you how to make decisions, and making you aware of everything in the world (and specifically of those items that are created for people who are not you that are markers of their higher status than you, creating a desire for things you don't naturally want or need because they become signifiers of an easier life), we judge you harshly for your decisions, and the less actual power and resources you have, the harsher we judge you, which even increases decision fatigue that much more. (For instance, the fact that people freak out if they see you buy steak with food stamps makes the decision to do so when it's warranted by celebration or whatever that much harder, and makes your other decisions harder as well.)

So what I'm seeing here is that TPTB are seizing upon decision fatigue as a way of making people believe that they didn't actually want to be free, when what's really going on is people are being deprived of good guidance, badly educated, and having everything they really can't have shoved in their face as an ideal to aspire to 24/7.

[evilawyer]

So what I'm seeing here is that TPTB are seizing upon decision fatigue as a way of making people believe that they didn't actually want to be free, when what's really going on is people are being deprived of good guidance, badly educated, and having everything they really can't have shoved in their face as an ideal to aspire to 24/7.

Confabulate and confound = great way to control the masses.

[cleverthylacine]

A classic abuser gaslighting tactic is to flood people with bad information, make them so tired that they make bad decisions, then convince them that they are bad decision-makers and need their decisions made for them.

I see a lot of this at work in politics right now.

[firecat]

This is an awesome critique! The article does go into this stuff a little bit, but not much.

[chaos_by_design]

You make some really interesting points. I liked the original article, but you bring up some important issues as well.

[eggcrack]

Wow, this was really interesting. I must test that sugar thing at some point.

[snippy]

One thing I've read about is that habits, once set, don't require will power. (Sure they require a lot of will power to start.) Now that I know about limited will power I can choose what things to use my will power on, like not starting a new routine that I want to become a habit during a time when I am using a lot of will power on other things. Or if it's stressful at work and I'm using will power not to blow up at my bosses, I spend will power on Sunday to pick out a week's worth of outfits so I don't have to make those decisions every morning before I even get to work.

[redbird]

The study, if it's valid, helps make sense of something in my life: I tend to eat most of my vegetables early in the day, in the form of salads for lunch and the like. This is deliberate, and partly situational (a handy salad bar near work, and the desire for more variety than I can easily manage at home without wasting vegetables). But if resisting temptation uses energy, and even a woman who likes salad is sometimes tempted by a pizza or a brisket sandwich, I'm more likely to go for the salad at noon and the pizza at 9 p.m.

The driver for that array of choices isn't just people who want to be able to choose from lots of different things, because it feels like having more stuff. A chunk of it is that different people want different things, and the market can be additive: I go through catalogs looking for purple shirts, for example. Someone else wants a particular shade of green. The next person wants a blue or red shirt with buttons and a chest pocket. That can produce a page that shows a shirt in 17 different shades: and if I'm lucky the one purple one is a shade I like. But I can quickly say yes or no, because it either does or doesn't come in purple. The person who thinks "that's a nice style, what color should I get?" probably has to spend more time on it.

To some extent, I deal with this by trying to make patterns and treat things as solved problems. The last time I went to Boston, the train was called over the PA system and I moved toward the gate. The person next to me asked if that was the Boston train, because she hadn't heard them clearly, and I realized that what I had heard was the train number, not the destination. I didn't decide to make a note of my train number: but the 1:00 train from New York to Boston always has the same number, and after a while it stuck in my brain.

Lots of people do this sort of thing, though they may not think of it in those terms. At one of the places I get breakfast on my way to work, I sometimes have to interrupt the guy and say "no, egg roll" because he remembers that I usually get a bialy. Most people get one thing every morning; many of them also always get breakfast in the same place (that includes the large number who make their own breakfast at home, of course).
And even there, many people get the same breakfast every morning, but to satisfy his customers the guy with the cart has a few kinds of bagels, several other sorts of roll, and a variety of different donuts and Danishes.

[mig]

Steph, thank you for posting this. It made sense of a lot of things for me that I thought were "just me" and my failing, aging brain. Upon reflection, a lot of things make a lot more sense once applying this data/information to seemingly random phenomenon. Wow.

[firecat]

I'm glad it helps to know it's not "just you"!

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

same effect

if you have 5 choices, none of which are exactly right, there is more work to do than if you have 50 choices some of which are exactly right

I see this in design situations (font & colour for instance). If I'm looking for a 1930s-style geometric typeface suitable for a poster, it's less work finding exactly the right one out of a library of thousands than trying to make something that isn't quite right do the job.

[firecat]

Good point, I hadn't thought of that.

I think in many cases it would take a lot of experience to get to the point where you could say "This one is exactly right."

[graymalkin13.livejournal.com]

I think in many cases it would take a lot of experience to get to the point where you could say "This one is exactly right."

Which launches the entire industry of Designers! Seems like in almost every area of life these days, if you have enough money, you can hire someone to "design" stuff, from your living room to your wedding, to your website, to your vacation, to your entire life (life coaches). There's a co-industry in reality TV shows that follow these designers at work -- so many shows that they must get amazing ratings from a fascinated public. And of course these designers generate self-help books and DVDs and software, ad infinitum.

Also, it strikes me that being able to offer a huge variety of options serves as a marketing feature for businesses. "We offer you more choices!" Even if people feel stymied standing front of a salad bar with 2947 kinds of dressing, they still want all those options, because people are just LIKE THAT. Or 6837 cable channels when they only watch half a dozen. It's some sort of psychological experience of luxury even when the things being chosen are trivial.

[firecat]

Seems like in almost every area of life these days, if you have enough money, you can hire someone to "design" stuff, from your living room to your wedding, to your website, to your vacation, to your entire life

Yep. And if you are content to fumble along making things up, rather than letting someone design it for you, there's a whole passel of Disapproving Societal Messages standing outside your window with baseball bats. (I feel this way especially about the "life design" part.)

It's some sort of psychological experience of luxury

Good point, says the person who just spent 3 hours shopping for JUST THE RIGHT SET of half a dozen $2 pens.

[graymalkin13.livejournal.com]

And if you are content to fumble along making things up, rather than letting someone design it for you, there's a whole passel of Disapproving Societal Messages standing outside your window with baseball bats. (I feel this way especially about the "life design" part.)

That's because you could never make decisions as well as an Expert Decision Maker (designer).

It occurs to me that social pressure to employ Expert Decision Makers is related to aspirational marketing.

"The basic concept of "aspirational marketing" is reaching consumers and helping them deal with, ameliorate and understand issues of social place and personal identity." -- Nancy Koehn
http://www.entrepreneur.com/entrepreneurextra/fiveminuteswith.../article40482.html

Yeah, because we consumers need to be told our place and who we are. By products.

Good point, says the person who just spent 3 hours shopping for JUST THE RIGHT SET of half a dozen $2 pens.

There's nothing wrong with that! Luxury is fun! You just have to be smart enough to realize when you're being manipulated.

[firecat]

"The basic concept of "aspirational marketing" is reaching consumers and helping them deal with, ameliorate and understand issues of social place and personal identity." -- Nancy Koehn

I think she means "Pay money so that they can believe they are of higher status."

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

" Even if people feel stymied standing front of a salad bar with 2947 kinds of dressing, they still want all those options"

Nellorat has a good point. Once you've found which dressing you like best, then it becomes the default in future. So the delay only happens once per customer.

The salad bar can make it easier, by grouping the dressings by type and sub-type, so you can quickly eliminate whole sections.

Part of the problem with packaged crackers in a supermarket, is that they're grouped by brand not type, and the most popular default ('original flavor') isn't packaged distinctively. So it's not so much a decision problem as just randomly seeking through the jumble to find what you already know you like.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

PS to my own. I want to thank Firecat for a very helpful discussion here. The NYT article is good, and the comments here are sparking some good ideas for how to cope.

On crackers, I'll try going to that aisle not with a 'browsing' attitude but just 'ruthlessly ignore everything not labeled "original" '. ;-)

I've already been resolving that when in doubt, follow the thought that will leave me in better shape to deal with whatever may come up next -- whether that be a major decision, or a road rage incident, or whatever. This discussion has made me more conscious of what distractions to avoid.

thanks!

[graymalkin13.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem with packaged crackers in a supermarket, is that they're grouped by brand not type, and the most popular default ('original flavor') isn't packaged distinctively.

They do that on purpose, you know. A huge part of supermarket revenue is impulse purchases people make while searching through the jumble for what they really want.

Also, each brand manufacturer is paying for the shelf space to exhibit its own product, and they diversify their product as much as possible to take up more shelf space -- and more of your attention. So... they're always going to be grouped by brand.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Yes! And I'd add to this: in everyday life, once you find the right thing, that can become the default, obviating future choices. With the almost-right thing, you keep looking. I think this happens a lot with staples of clothing, such as jeans or everyday underpants.

Hmmm...and jeans and t-shirts becoming more popular reduces necessity for choice, at least along one axis. (I can buy various t-shirts but they usually fit more or less the same.)

I definitely think that routine is the major factor that offsets decision fatigue. For instance, it's been noted that of all food choices, almost everyone is most conservative when it comes to breakfast, and most people have something similar every day. That makes sense: before I've waken up enough to have the energy to choose, I go for a routine/default.

[graymalkin13.livejournal.com]

Sugar combats decision fatigue because the activity of the brain changes when it is low on glucose.

I wonder if we come to crave sugar because even though our glucose level may be fine, our brains miscalculate the amount available or come to mimic low glucose functioning when glucose is actually plentiful.

I mean, I wonder if this plays somehow into the sugar cravings some diabetics get even when blood glucose levels are not low.

Also, it's my experience that decision-making can become virtually impossible if the decision is big enough. For the last year, since my husband lost his job, I've been trying to decide whether to struggle to hang onto our house or let it go into foreclosure and move to a rental.

This decision is so huge that I simply haven't been able to make it. Even after a year of researching the alternatives and emotional support from my support network. The default or "do nothing" option is to take money from our retirement account to pay the mortgage.

So far we've done this twice, against all the advice we've gotten. And we're about to do it again, because even contemplating this decision reduces me to instant, severe fatigue. Of course it doesn't help that I'm also dealing with depression. I imagine that for people with atypical brain functioning, decision fatigue could set in a lot faster. Or maybe more slowly, depending...

Anyway -- fascinating subject.

[firecat]

wonder if this plays somehow into the sugar cravings some diabetics get

Good question. I know that part of the issue is that muscles stop responding to insulin's message (Muscles: "We're hungry!" Insulin: "Hey, there's sugar out here, come and get it!" Muscles: "What, we didn't hear you...WE'RE HUNGRY") but I don't know if the brain also stops responding. But I wouldn't be surprised.

Also, it's my experience that decision-making can become virtually impossible if the decision is big enough.

Especially if the decision involves choosing to act in ways that you know will cause you pain and stress.

This didn't come up in the article but I think that bit goes a long way toward explaining why some people stay too long in bad relationships. (Another topic I posted a link to recently.) The decision to leave feels more painful than the non-decision to stay even though staying will involve more abuse.

I imagine that for people with atypical brain functioning, decision fatigue could set in a lot faster.

It certainly does for me, when my depression or brain fog is acting up.

[kitrona.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this. It's definitely an interesting subject, and something to keep in mind.

I suspect the answer to your question has something to do with not many people knowing about this, and also something to do with wanting to have the "perfect" choice available for the greatest number of people.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I do think that decision making and "self-control"--which I a more likely to call "habit change"--come down to many of the same things psychologically, in that each is the opposite of default. If I'm watching my bg, each act of eating is considered consciously; if I'm not, then I can default to eating when I feel like it.

If I'm right that default/habit is the alternative to decision fatigue, then one major set of decisions in life is what I have to keep deciding about and what I can do by default. A lot of this for me comes down to how good/reliable I think my habits are in that specific area/way--less, perhaps surprisingly, than comes down to how often and how severely the situations change.

This contrast also helps explain why I don't find teaching nearly as tiring as that many constant decisions would seem to indicate: by now much of what I say is, not rote, but well-worn paths that I decide to go down, & how far, but which often flow more unconsciously once that's chosen. And/but there are enough new challenges to keep me interested.

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

I can certainly relate to this...a lot (especially the aspects that connect to being 'poor')

Mind if I share this...including your commentary (just the body of post commentary...not the comments)? I'd likely share on DW/LJ and possibly FB

[firecat]

Definitely, feel free to share anything I post publicly. (And I like it best if you let me know that you've done so.)

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post! The bit about sugar is very useful for me right now. We're looking for a house, and my take-away is that I should eat a meal just before we go to look at houses each time, because then I'm less likely to be all, "Ehhhhh, whatever."

In terms of your last question, I think there are two problems. One is that people don't understand decision making costs and fatigue. That part I was already aware about in terms of studies about shopping and selection and how having two many choices can be paralyzing. The problem is that people *think* that having more selection is always better, and so they selectively go to businesses that offer them more choices. If you want to buy a television, are you more likely to go to a store where you can see two or three models, or go to a store where you can see twenty? Probably the latter. And so stores offer more options because it makes people shop there. Remember that they're in the business of making money, not in the business of making you happy. If you act against your own best interests in shopping, then the stores are going to cater to your self-destructive selectiveness, not to what would be good for you but earn them less business.

The other, though, I think is where having more options becomes more complex. I think more products are hitting the point where they can cater to specific needs. If you have one type of shampoo, then it makes your hair cleaner and it works best for the 'average' person's hair. If you have twenty, then you can have one for oily hair, one for dry hair, one for people with dandruff, etc., etc. Is that bad? Probably not, because it means that people with special needs can get those needs met. I mean, it's exactly this phenomenon that leads to unscented products for people with allergies, which I think most people can agree are a good thing. The other part of this is that people develop loyalties, and so shopping at a place with a large selection can become a way to avoid excessive decision making -- by going with a decision that you've already made. I do this all the time, personally. There's a little drug store near my house, and I often go there first when I need stuff, because I think, "I should shop at the local store so that there will still be a local store tomorrow." However, if they don't have the brand I want, 90% of the time I would rather go to the Shoppers Drug Mart up the street than to actually have to look at all the products they have and choose one. So then I go to Shoppers and get the kind I've already decided upon in the past. Now, you could do this simply if there *were* only a few brands, but everyone has these loyalties to different brands. So by having more, they allow a greater number of people to find the brand they already like and thus avoid having to actively choose. This can go for colours and so on as well as brands -- it's easier for me to pick up a shirt in a colour that I already know looks good on me than to choose another colour, which is why so many of my clothes are one of three colours.

I do recall in University when we had an exchange student from Scandinavia, and a friend of mine and I took him around town to show him where everything was, he was FURIOUS about the drug store because he saw the ridiculous proliferation of selection as an aspect of North American gluttony. He ranted all the way through dinner about how many kinds of soap there were, etc. It really got under his skin.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

this is really interesting. just wanted to say. but i can't say anything about it BECAUSE I AM TOO TIRED!

fatigue feels like physical pain to me, and even having to make micro decisions feels like hard labour, so this seemed really relevant to me, even if i can't process it properly right now.

[firecat]

Those things are very true for me too sometimes.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

i just did an online grocery shop - it just about killed me!

[fauxklore]

I just eliminate certain decisions from my life altogether, which is one of the things that my first extended travel in the developing world did to me. I remember being overwhelmed by first world supermarkets after that, particularly in the cereal aisle, after months of only corn flakes or (once in a while) rice krispies being available.

Ironically, it is decisions about where to travel to that are most likely to overwhelm me now.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link!

I find that the decision-making (and logistical) part of my brain is the puniest. It wakes up about 9am (I get up at 5 or 6 am) and goes down about 8pm. I really can't make decisions or do logistical planning after that.

Contrast that with arithmetic -- I am happy to do taxes and stuff like that very early in the morning when I first get up, and can even manage somewhat late at night. I suspect if I did fancier math, that would work fine, too.

I put "decision-making" and "logistics" in the same bucket where logistics is like planning the most efficient shopping trip, where I have to plan the route, remember the items I'm going to buy, and consider the weight/bulk limit of how much stuff I can carry, the hours of the stores, blah blah blah. It sure feels like the same part of the brain. I'm curious about whether the article does the same thing.

[firecat]

The article didn't say much about logistics, but it makes sense that they'd be related.

The OH has a very logistics-wired brain but sometimes dislikes making decisions. I wonder if it's because he uses up that resources on logistics.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Now that I've read the article, I find that Tierny puts the decision-making faculty in the same box with self-control, which is not my subjective experience. He also says that we don't subjectively feel that our decision-maker is out of gas when it is out of gas, we just start making crappy decisions.

I thought I could tell when I'm running low on decision-making fuel, and the self-control faculty to be a different part of the brain.

Oh yeah, and it's caffeine rather than sugar that helps me revive my decision-making and planning faculties. I am not sure what I need to do fuel my self-control.

[firecat]

I also disagree with the notion that one can't subjectively tell when the decision-maker is out of gas. Maybe some people can't but I can.

I'm an editor and my job involves making little decisions many times a minute (because the kind of editing work I do is somewhat subjective rather than only correcting grammar/spelling mistakes); maybe I'm more sensitive to noticing when my decision-making ability is changing because of that.

It would be interesting to see some research specifically directed at this.

For me decision-making and self-control do feel like the same part of the brain.

Caffeine works for me too; I'm not sure if that's a direct effect or because it does something to my metabolism to make it make more glucose.