Maximizing vs. Satisficing? How happy are you with your decisions?

"Choose well, your choice is brief, yet endless." ~ Goethe

• Do you channel surf when you watch TV, even while attempting to watch one program?
• When you are in the car listening to the radio, do you often check other stations to see if something better is playing even if you’re relatively satisfied with what you’re listening to?
• No matter how satisfied with you are with your job, do you think it is only right for you to be on the lookout for better opportunities?
• Do you find that writing – even just a letter to a friend – is difficult because it’s so hard to word things just right?
• Do you find renting videos, or shopping for clothes or gifts difficult because you’re always struggling to pick the best one?
• Whenever you’re faced with a choice, do you try to imagine what all the other possibilities are, even ones that aren’t possible at the moment?

Well, if you said yes to most of the above questions you’re probably a “maximizer” - that is, you have goal orientation that is driven by the question “Is this the best?”. But if you think more in terms of “Is this alternative acceptable?” you are more of a “satisficer”.

Of course, like for any other psychological categorization, these represent general tendencies and could show variation depending on factors such as the type of decision (eg., health – related vs. grocery shopping) and the time available to make a decision.

Maximizing is the better strategy especially for important decisions - maximizers plan more carefully in solving problems, and their high standards may drive them to greater achievement.  However, maximization can come at a significant cost to well-being. If you are a maximizer you probably experience some negative post-decision consequences of being a maximizer.

Research shows that maximization is negatively related to happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and positively associated depression, perfectionism, and regret. This means picking the best option does not come with being happy or satified with the decision.

This is a red flag especially when the number of options increase. Most of us enjoy flexibility and having options – we think the more the better, right? Well, research shows: rather not! According to Dr. Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College, as more options are added three problems arise:

1. It becomes difficult to gather adequate information for all available options.
2. As options expand, people’s standards for what is an acceptable outcome rise.
3. People may come to believe that any unacceptable result is their fault, because with so many options, they should be able to find a satisfactory one.

But these problems do not trouble everyone equally. Maximizers tend to “suffer” more compared to satisficiers. Think about a purchasing decision.  If there were only two software programs it would be relatively easier to pick one, but let’s say the IT manager is trying to decide among five products. Let's look at two scenarios:

A “satisficer” manager would be content with using “good enough” information as basis for making a choice. Based on this information, her goal would be to pick the one which is “acceptable” for the needs of the company. Post-decision she wouldn’t keep on questioning her decision thinking “Have I collected all information?” or “Is this really the best software for the company, or could one of the others have been better?”

A maximizer, on the other hand would try to make sure he has a lot of information about each product – which would probably take longer to gather and evaluate. His decision making will be guided by “Which one is the best?”. After he makes his decision he is likely to seek standards or ratings to compare his decision against. 

The irony is that despite doing their best in weighing the options, maximizers can’t let go once they've made a choice. In a way you could also say that maximizers spend too much time in the deliberative mindset. Rather, they show a susceptibility to regret as indicated by the following statements:

• Whenever I make a choice, I’m curious about what would have happened if I had chosen differently.
• Whenever I make a choice, I try to get information about how the other alternatives turned out.
• If I make a choice and it turns out well, I still feel like something of a failure if I find out that another choice would have turned out better.

Maximizers also have higher expectations from their chosen option and they expect a higher rate of return given the huge investment they’ve made in weighing the alternatives before deciding. This tendency sets them up for frequent disappointment.

So, if you

• have a general tendency to take a lot of time in weighing different options;
• find it difficult to enjoy the choices you’ve made because you can’t stop thinking what would have happened if you had picked the other alternative;
• tend to compare yourself frequently with others – especially those who are better off;
• experience regret often;
• can’t make sense why the boost of happiness you got from making that “best” decision wares off so easily (despite all that effort you’ve put in!)

then, you need to make some changes in the way you make decisions. That is, if you would like to still make good decisions, but be more satisfied and happy with them and experience less regret.

Here's a few things that will help you to make the shift:

• Become aware how much time and energy you’re putting into making different decisions
• Each time you’re faced with a decision (and that includes ordering food in a restaurant!) allocate a certain amount of time for decision making and stick with that.
• Question your goal to pick “the best option” when faced with decisions – ask yourself: Is it really that important and necessary, or is it enough to pick “a good enough /acceptable” option?
• Get others to question you when you are striving to pick the best option.
• As you shift towards making “satisficing” decisions, make a quick post-decision analysis. How long did it take? How good do you feel about the decision? And how satisfying were the results? The aim here is to see you can still make good decisions by being a “satisficer”.  

Again, like any other habit it will take time to change this one but it is likely to have positive outcomes.  That's also why I suggest practicing it even with minor decisions such as ordering food or renting a movie. And you’ll still have the flexibility to take all the time you need when you are faced with important decisions.  Happy deciding!

References:

Schwartz, B. (2000). Self determination: The tyranny of freedom. American Psychologist, 55, 79 – 88.

Schwartz, B., Ward, A., Monterosso, J., Lyubomirsky, S., White, K., & Lehman, D. R. (2002). Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1178-1197.

  

There's nothing wrong with creating "worst-case" scenarios - as long as you don't attach negative feelings to those scenarios.

When I first heard this statement during a leadership seminar, I somehow knew it was very important and would have far-reaching implications. At that time I preferred to ponder on it later and just noted it down. And since then I’ve realized so many different contexts that it is relevant for…

Think about different situations where you need to make decisions… To accept or decline a deal/an offer; to give honest feedback or not; to hire or fire someone; to escalate or de-escalate conflict; to set up your business or not; to ask for business or not; to quit your job or not… The list is long – pick your own favorite example before you read on.

Because we live in a world with a lot of uncertainty – either because we cannot gather all necessary information; or even if did, don’t have the capacity to process it all; or simply because we cannot see the future – our decision-making is never perfect.

One of the ways to simplify this process is to think in terms of best-case, most-probable and worst-case scenarios. So actually, it’s not that there’s nothing wrong with creating “worst-case” scenarios, it is actually necessary to consider them while making decisions!

Especially in certain industries or functions it is unthinkable not to consider those worst-case scenarios. Think about the credit department in banks – how could you not think of the worst case scenario before you approve a loan? Or imagine a lawyer working on an M & A deal – how could he afford to overlook the worst-case scenario? (Actually, professionals working in areas that need a constant/systematic focus on the worst-case scenarios are at a risk of carrying the same outlook into other areas, such as personal life, where such a focus is not always adaptive – more on this in a future post)

So there is really nothing wrong with working with worst-case scenarios per se. Although hopefully your decision-making is not systematically biased using only those types of scenarios. But what about those negative feelings that we attach to those “worst-case” scenarios? Even though one can think of a number of them such as, anxiety, guilt, sadness, disappointment what it really boils down to is: Fear!

Fear of: failure, rejection, losing a person, losing control, losing self-confidence, losing face, getting hurt, wasting time, not being able to handle whatever happens, not being accepted as we are…

And what happens when you feel fear? Although its impact shows variation among people, in general fear tends to block action and moving forward. It is more likely to keep people in the status quo, whatever feels safer. People become less likely to act on their decisions and gut-feelings even when they think there’s much to gain if they were to act.

Thus, instead of going active to confront a conflict, “fearing” the worst case scenario people avoid talking about the conflict or the person who’s on the other side of that conflict. Or instead of asking for business, “fearing” the rejection, they pass on an important opportunity.

Then the whole rationalization mechanism kicks in to justify their approach to avoid the resulting dissonance – the dissonance from not acting in the direction which could have also ended up in a “better than the worst-case scenario” result.

Another tendency that makes attaching negative feelings to worst-case scenarios even more problematic is that we are actually not good at affective forecasting. In other words, when we imagine how good or bad we would feel following a future event we tend to over – or under-estimate the intensity of our future emotions.

This happens because we tend to rely too much on our current emotions or some similar events that stand out in our memory due to their extreme/intense emotional significance as anchors. The consequence? Inaccurate predictions about how bad we would feel if the worst-case scenarios were to come true!

What’s a better strategy then? Well, the answer is in the title! We need to keep worst-case scenarios free of feelings as much as possible.  And how do we do that, you ask?

1. First, start with best-case or most-probable scenarios to create a positive vision which leads to positive emotions including hope, sense of accomplishment, relief, confidence, pride etc.. When people feel good, their thinking becomes more creative, integrative, flexible, and open to information (Isen, 1987)
2. Then become aware of your emotions as you think of the worst case-scenario. And get clear as much as possible what they are – name them! And ask yourself what’s behind them. When negative emotions remain as generalized unexplained anxiety or fear, it is much more difficult to do something about them. 

Here’s an example:

Issue: Confronting a colleague in a conflict

• Best-case scenario: We’ll talk about the issue, express our disagreements, show respect, stay calm, clear the air, find a compromise satisfying for both. (Possible positive feelings: Hope, relief, accomplishment, confidence)
• Worst-case scenario: Losing my control, getting emotional, straining the relationship, not getting what I want, losing face
• Feelings: What am I feeling (specific!) right now when I think of the worst-case scenario? : Anxiety for not knowing what will happen, fear of losing the relationship, fear of losing control and face. Most of the time once you name and acknowledge the emotions, you already start feeling much more calm about the worst-case scenario! As a further step you can ask yourself how realistic that worst-case scenario is. 
• Observer's perspective: Now that you have expressed the emotions – look at the scenario from a detached perspective, from an observer’s perspective. That is the perspective that would help with effective decision making. Now you can evaluate the scenario much better as you weigh its pro’s and con’s and hence, how “bad” it really is and finally how is probable it is. The data you have is not “confounded” by the negative emotions anymore.

Again, trying to make worst-case scenarios emotion-free doesn’t mean that we should suppress or ignore our negative emotions. On the contrary, emotions are  very valuable in decision making, they are signposts that signal what we are not sometimes able to pick up at the conscious cognitive level. Reflecting on them gives us a wealth of information about our needs, motivations, un-explored assumptions. This is why I suggest that you name the specific negative emotions you are experiencing when you think of the worst-case scenario. What I am arguing is that they shouldn’t be an obstacle in effective decision-making as they become an ingrained but unexplained part of the worst-case scenarios.

Getting used to “detaching” the negative emotions from the worst-case scenarios might and probably will take sometime and effort. This is true especially if you are someone who is not comfortable with working with your emotions; or if you believe that you never rely on them in your decision-making anyway. In that case, you would gain even more by reflecting on the emotional level of decision making because it means that so far your emotions have been influencing your decisions without your control!

"I am able to control only that of which I am aware. That of which I am unaware controls me. “  ~ John Whitmore


References:
Isen, A. M. (1987). Positive affect, cognitive processes and social behavior. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 20, 203-253.