Mutual inclusivity improves decision-making by smoothing out choice's competitive edge.

ABSTRACT: Decision-making forms a central bottleneck to most of our tasks, one that people often experience as costly. To mitigate these costs, previous work has proposed adjusting one's threshold for deciding (e.g., satisficing) to avoid over-deliberating. Here, we test an alternative solution to these costs, one that targets the basis for most choice costs: the fact that choosing one option sacrifices others (mutual exclusivity). Across 4 studies (N = 385), we test whether this tension can be relieved by framing choices as inclusive (allowing more than one option from a set, similar to a buffet), and whether doing so improves decision-making and the experience thereof. We find that inclusivity makes choices more efficient, because of its unique impact on the level of competition between potential

SUBMITTER: Leng X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10327072 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature