This is how it goes: You crumple into the couch after the hard grind of a workday. You drive your hand into the cushions, retrieve the remote, and automatically bring up the Netflix menu. You scroll through, first Comedies, then Critically-Acclaimed Dramas, then British TV because everyone’s talking about this Black Mirror thing. You select one, read the synopsis, and by then, it’s lost your interest, and you move on. You look at the clock, do some calculations, realize the run-time of whatever you’re about to play is greater than the amount of time remaining before you’re set to go to bed. You turn off the TV, get up from the couch, and curse yourself for wasting the opportunity.
What just happened?
“The phenomenon you described is choice overload, or choice paralysis, or too-much-choice effect,” says Benjamin Scheibehenne, a psychologist who studies how we make—or don’t make—our choices. CONT.
Rick Paulas, Pacific Standard