Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/Sek3E-X63SM   You’ll make your best choice faster by quickly narrowing your alternatives to a pair.  Swiss psychologists now report the dynamics of this process after their study of 129 subjects attempting to finalize food choices from a menu.   The investigators unraveled the decision-making process by following the participants’ eye movements.  Those who arrived at a final choice most quickly, rapidly chose two possibilities as an intermediate step.   When selecting an entrée or a partner, use this rule of twos.  Whittle down your alternatives to a pair of the best.  Then focus on the pros and cons of each.  If a final decision eludes you, don’t stress but rather flip a coin.    Sebastian Gluth, Nadja Kern, Maria Kortmann, Cécile L. Vitali. Value-based attention but not divisive normalization influences decisions with multiple alternatives. Nature Human Behaviour, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-0822-0   #decisionmaking #humanbehavior #selection