Choice Overload
The Basic Idea
Applying to university can be overwhelming. Not only do you have to decide on your preferred program, but you also have to choose between universities that offer your program of choice. I applied to six schools: two schools as my “top choice” and four schools as my “backup”. My peers applied to a similar number of programs — one friend even applied to twelve! Why do we have such a hard time narrowing down our choices?
Choice overload, also known as “overchoice” or “the paradox of choice”, refers to the difficulty of making a choice when presented with many options, especially when all options seem to have equal value.1 More options is not always good: it can decrease our motivation to decide, decrease satisfaction with the final choice, and increase negative emotions like regret.
Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.
– Barry Schwartz, author ofThe Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
