Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload

Scheibehenne, Benjamin; Greifeneder, Rainer; Todd, Peter M.

doi:10.1086/651235

Cited by 825 publications

(556 citation statements)

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“…Past studies have investigated the negative effects of information overload on consumers (Iyengar and Lepper 2000;Malhotra 1982;Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, and Todd 2010). This research finds more information can drive poor decision quality (Jacoby, Speller, and Kohn 1974) and less satisfied consumer decision making (Lee and Lee 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Walters¹

2014

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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This dissertation investigates how people make inferences about missing information.Whereas most prior literature focuses on how people process known information, I show that the extent to which people make inferences about missing information impacts judgments and choices. Specifically, I investigate how (1) awareness of known unknowns affects overconfidence in judgment in Chapter 1, (2) beliefs about the knowability of unknowns impacts investment strategies in Chapter 2, and (3) inferences about forgotten unknowns influence choices from memory in Chapter 3.Chapter 1 investigates how overconfidence can stem from neglecting to consider missing information. Most prior research has attributed overconfidence to people focusing disproportionately on evidence favoring the chosen hypothesis relative to its alternatives. In this iii chapter, I find that neglecting unknown evidence independently contributes to overconfidence. In a first study, respondents answered questions such as, "Which of these fast food items has more calories, a Subway sandwich, or a McDonald's cheeseburger? / How confident are you?" Using a process tracing technique, I found that participants who considered more missing evidence were less overconfident than those that thought about more known evidence. Meanwhile, participants who considered more unknown information answered the same number of questions correctly, resulting in better calibration. In two additional studies, I prompted participants to list unknowns before assessing confidence in their judgments. This "consider the unknowns" technique reduced overconfidence substantially, and was more effective than the de-biasing technique most often prescribed in the research literature ("consider the alternative"). Importantly, considering the unknowns was selective in its impact: it reduced confidence only in domains where participants were overconfident, but did not affect confidence in domains where participants were wellcalibrated or under-confident.Chapter 2 investigates how inferences about the knowability of missing information impacts investment choices. Recent research has found that people intuitively distinguish aleatory uncertainty that is inherently random or stochastic (e.g. What is the probability that a fair coin will land heads?) from epistemic uncertainty that is attributed to missing knowledge or information (e.g., Which company had a larger market capitalization at the end of 2015, Google or Apple?). In a series of surveys and experiments involving laypeople, experienced investors, and financial advisors, I found that investors who viewed stock market uncertainty as more epistemic/knowable searched for more stock information and were willing to pay more for financial advice, whereas investors who viewed stock market uncertainty as more aleatory/random diversify more. Similarly, when investors were primed to think about epistemic iv uncertainty they are more willing to pay for stock information whereas when they were primed to think about aleatory uncertainty they diversified mo...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Walters¹

2014

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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“…In many countries across the world, people enjoy an everincreasing variety of different foods readily available in grocery stores and restaurants (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, & Todd, 2010). While such large assortments provide the necessary prerequisites for a diverse diet, they also bring the risk of overconsumption, particularly if the variety stems from energy-dense foods (Foote et al, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic influences on dietary variety - Results from a twin study

et al. 2014

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A B S T R A C TThe heritability of variety seeking in the food domain was estimated from a large sample (N = 5,543) of middle age to elderly monozygotic and dizygotic twins from the "Virginia 30,000" twin study. Different dietary variety scores were calculated based on a semi-quantitative food choice questionnaire that assessed consumption frequencies and quantities for a list of 99 common foods. Results indicate that up to 30% of the observed variance in dietary variety was explained through heritable influences. Most of the differences between twins were due to environmental influences that are not shared between twins. Additional non-genetic analyses further revealed a weak relationship between dietary variety and particular demographic variables, including socioeconomic status, age, sex, religious faith, and the number of people living in the same household.

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“…Similarly, most studies on choice effects included alternatives of positive valence (e.g., consumer electronics in Brehm, 1956; see also Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, & Todd, 2010;Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). The only exception is a study by Shultz et al (1999), where participants were asked to choose between two posters that were judged as less desirable than average among a total of eight posters.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

When possessions become part of the self: Ownership and implicit self-object linking

Gawronski

2016

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload

Cited by 825 publications

References 104 publications

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Known Unknowns in Judgment and Choice

Genetic influences on dietary variety - Results from a twin study

When possessions become part of the self: Ownership and implicit self-object linking

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