Tuesday, September 7, 2010

"Making endless decisions"

http://gblog2.academicladder.com/2008/05/making-endless-decisions-thats-why.htm

"From the Washington Post today:
Having to make too many choices can affect one's ability to stay focused, finish work and do complex mental tasks, finds a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Almost 400 people took part in seven experiments in which some were asked to make choices or rate various products. The more choices individuals had to make and the more time they spent deciding, the worse they fared on later tasks, regardless of the complexity of the choices."

An interesting article. Writing certainly involves more decision-making than plopping down in front of the computer screen and twiddling away time on hulu.

1 comments:

Josie said...

I read something similar to this once. It was about how if people were made to be confused (with a series of very fast moving pictures put together in a mini film) they would be seriously affected by that afterwards. They showed this by asking them simple maths questions after the film, and did the same with a control group who didn't see the film. I can't remember the specific result but they did get more wrong than the control group.

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