Making choices is hard. That would be why researcher Moran Cerf has 1it from his life. As a rule, he always chooses the second menu item at a restaurant.
This is2by his research in neuroeconomics(神经经济学) (a somewhat new, divisive field) at Northwestern University. As Business Insider describes, Cerf has extended his ideas--which draw on some controversial ideas in psychology, including ego depletion out--into a piece of advice that, to 3 happiness, people should "build a life that requires 4 decisions by surrounding themselves with people who possess traits they prefer.
On an instinctive level, Cerf's idea 5: Many choices people make are the product of social pressures and the inputs of 6 people around them. One example Cerf furnishes is that, 7 consistently ordering the second menu item, he never picks where to eat. Rather, he 8 his decision to his dining partner--which friend he plans to eat with, probably one he trusts--and always lets them pick.
While it's 9 what, if any, scientific principles underlie those pieces of advice, there is no shortage of research showing that choices can sometimes feel more 10 than liberating. An example from Quanta poits (假设) : If you have a clear love of Snickers(士力架), choosing that over an Almond Joy(杏仁巧克力) or a Milky Way(牛奶巧克力) should be a 11. And, as an experiment conducted by neuroscientist Paul Glimcher at NYU shows, most of the time it is, 12 you introduce more choices. When the participants were offered three candy bars (Snickers, Milky Way, and Almond Joy) they had no problem picking their favorite, but when they were given the option of one among 20, including Snickers, they would sometimes drift away from their 13. When the choices were taken away in later trials, the participants would wonder what caused them to make such a bad decision.
As Quanta details, according to a model called "divisive normalization(分裂归一化), which has gained some popularity, the way the brain encodes choices has a lot to do with how it values all its options. So, if you have two things that are clearly 14, brain areas involved in decision-making fire in a pattern that makes the decision clear. When the choices are comparable, the brain does its best to focus on the distinctions between the two, but more choices 15 that ability out.
