Here is the full transcript and summary of Mary Steffel’s talk titled “How I Overcame Decision Paralysis” at TEDxNortheasternU conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Back when I was studying to be a decision scientist, I had the opportunity to learn from someone who changed the way I approached difficult decisions, Cinderella. That’s me playing Cinderella in a university production of Into the Woods. You see, in this version of the fairy tale, Cinderella embodies what it’s like to be immobilized by indecision.
Cinderella is torn as to whether or not she wants to pursue a life with the prince. And so night after night, she attends the ball, but she runs away before the prince can ever learn who she really is. Eventually, the prince catches on to this, and in a grand romantic gesture of sorts, he spreads thick, sticky tar all over the steps of the palace to prevent her from running away.
This time, when Cinderella flees, her golden slippers get stuck in the tar, her feet are glued to the ground, and she’s confronted with how her indecision is literally keeping her from moving forward.
What I love about this moment is how it so beautifully captures what it’s like to be immobilized by indecision. As a professor of marketing here at Northeastern University, I study how people make difficult decisions. And as a fellow for the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences team in 2016, and in my ongoing work with the Office of Evaluation Sciences at the General Services Administration, I’ve had the opportunity to apply these insights to helping our government better support citizens in navigating decisions about the benefits our government provides.
What I hope to share with you today is what these experiences have taught me about how to overcome decision paralysis in our own lives, and how to help others do the same. Despite knowing a thing or two about decision making, I sometimes find myself immobilized by indecision as well. I’ve grappled with small decisions, like what to order for dinner. I’ve also struggled with bigger decisions, like where to go to college, what to study, or what to do with my life.
I still remember the first time I walked into a Teavana looking to buy some tea. Teavana was paradise for a tea lover. There were these rows upon rows of beautiful canisters, each one had a fantastic name, like Lavender Dreams or Peach Tranquility. I spent what seemed like hours in there, sorting through all the options, tasting all the different samples, and taking in the aroma of all the different flavors. But Teavana was hell for someone who was struggling to make a decision. I was so overwhelmed that I left without buying anything.
You see, our instinct when confronted with difficult choices is often not to choose anything at all. And while forgoing some tea may not seem like that big of a deal, it can be really costly when it leads us to put off or avoid more important decisions for which choosing something is better than nothing.
The cost of indecision is perhaps best epitomized by the paradox of Buridan’s ass. In this story, a hungry donkey is placed between two equally appealing bales of hay. The donkey can’t decide which of the bales to eat first, and so he starves to death while pondering the decision.
The moral of the story is that sometimes it’s better to choose something than to choose nothing. Only an ass would do otherwise. Well, if that’s true, then I confess, I’ve been a bit of an ass myself sometimes. I’ve paid a price for my indecision, but I suspect I’m not the only one who has. If any of these experiences sound familiar to you, raise your hand and keep it raised. How many of you, like me, found yourselves shopping at some point, only to leave the store without buying anything?
How many of you, like me, might have been spending hours researching flights, only to find that the flight that you want has now gone up in price or is no longer available? How many of you, like me, had a coupon or a gift card that you weren’t really sure how to spend, only to find that now it’s expired or disappeared in the bottom of a drawer somewhere? In looking around this room, I see that most all of us, at some time or another, have paid a price for our indecision.
Whether that be time, money, opportunities, or even our happiness. But is walking away empty-handed really our only alternative to making a difficult decision? One thing I learned from Cinderella is perhaps there’s a better option. While sitting there, stuck on the steps of the palace, Cinderella had a realization. She didn’t have to choose. She could delegate her decision to someone else. She did this by leaving the prince a clue to her identity, in this case, a golden slipper, and making it the prince’s responsibility to make the next move.
I took a tip from Cinderella the next time I went back to Teavana. This time, instead of getting overwhelmed by all of the options, I delegated my choice to a salesperson. I asked him which of the options he would recommend, and I told him which ones I was considering, and I purchased what he chose. This way, I walked away with what had become some of my favorite teas of all time.
In fact, this strategy worked so well for me that I use it all the time now. In fact, I even outsourced what to call this talk. This made me wonder, can giving people the option to delegate enable them to overcome decision paralysis in their own lives?
My collaborator, Eleanor Williams, and I explored this question in an experiment that was inspired by my experience at Teavana. In this study, we asked participants to imagine that they were shopping for tea.
We gave them either a small or a large set of teas to choose from. Half of our participants were on their own to make this decision. They could either choose a tea to purchase or pass for the time being.
The other half of our participants were told that a salesperson approached them and offered to help them make that decision. These participants had the option of choosing a tea, walking away empty-handed, or delegating that decision to the salesperson and letting him help them make a decision.
What we found was that people were overwhelmed by choosing from a large array of options. People were less likely to choose anything when they had many options to choose from than just a few. But when people had a salesperson present to whom they could delegate that decision, we found that people were more likely to choose a tea when there were many options than when there were only few options.
In fact, people were two and a half times more likely to make a purchase when they had a salesperson to help them navigate that long list of options than when they had that same choice and were on their own. What this study tells us is that giving people the option to delegate can enable them to overcome difficult decisions and walk away with something rather than nothing.
My collaborator and I followed up on this experiment in a series of other tests. And what we found was that people often cope with difficult decisions by delegating them to other people. People delegate decisions when there’s a lot of options to sort through, when those options are really similar to one another, or when the choice involves difficult trade-offs. People delegate trivial decisions, like what tea to buy, as well as more important decisions, like whether to undergo surgery.
We find that people delegate not because they’re just trying to put choices in better hands. Don’t get me wrong, people do like to delegate to experts. But when confronted with a tough choice, people are perfectly willing to delegate to anyone who’s willing to shoulder that responsibility. What does seem to motivate people to delegate difficult decisions is the desire to avoid making a difficult decision and the fear of making the wrong choice.
Our participants told us that they were afraid of making a mistake, that they were worried that they might want to kick themselves afterward, or that they might wish they would have known better. What seems to be so appealing about delegation is that it allows people to avoid the responsibility and regret of choosing while still getting something out of the decision.
What we learned here can be used for more than just buying tea. In my experience with the White House, I had the opportunity to put these insights into action. I collaborated with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and I helped them to enable citizens to navigate choices about prescription drug plans.
Every year, a notice goes out to over a million people who have prescription drug plans. This notice tells them that their premiums are going up, that they qualify to be paying zero dollars in premiums, and that they can switch plans to avoid paying these increased premiums. Although just about everyone receiving this notice would be better off switching to any plan with a zero dollar premium than sticking with the plan that they’re on, only a small fraction of them actually do so.
It’s not hard to imagine why people might be daunted by having to pick a different plan. This is a list of plans in Massachusetts with a zero dollar premium. It’s overwhelming. In some states, people have as many as ten plans to choose from, each with different networks, coverage, and special rules. It’s enough to make anyone want to avoid the decision altogether.
To help people overcome the decision paralysis that they may have been experiencing, one of the recommendations that we made for this notice was to remind people they didn’t have to make this decision alone. They could delegate this decision by calling Medicare for help comparing and switching plans.
Today we have more choices and more options than ever before in our lives, in every facet of them. In the modern dating scene, singles like Cinderella aren’t just deciding whether or not to see Prince Charming. They’re swiping left or right on hundreds of profiles of potential princes and plenty of frogs to find the one.
Shoppers are wading through dozens of consumer reviews and product descriptions to find the perfect cup of tea. And families are navigating long lists of health plans in order to find the right protection for themselves and their families. You would think that having all of these options available to us would only make us happier. And yet, it’s left many of us immobilized with indecision. We fail to choose anything for fear of making the wrong choice. And we walk away from these decisions empty-handed, often paying a hefty price for our indecision.
The lesson I hope to leave you with today is that walking away from a difficult decision empty-handed isn’t your only alternative to making a difficult choice. You don’t have to stand stuck like Cinderella with your feet glued to the ground. You don’t have to behave like an ass, resigning yourself to an empty belly or empty hands.
You can and should delegate difficult decisions to friends, experts, even strangers, so that you can overcome your decision paralysis and choose to make the most of the choices in your life. We can also pay it forward and lend decision support to those in our lives who are stuck. As friends, we can lend advice and input to our loved ones who might need a nudge to move forward. As retailers, we can provide product specialists to help people figure out what’s the right option for them.
And as employers and policymakers, we can connect families with advisors to help them navigate complicated decisions, like choosing a health care plan. Lending this decision support can help people overcome decision paralysis and leverage that support to walk away from these difficult choices with something rather than nothing, and to live more happily ever after.
Thank you.
SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:
Mary Steffel’s talk “How I Overcame Decision Paralysis” provides insightful strategies for tackling indecision, drawing on experiences from her career as a decision scientist and professor. Here are the key takeaways from her talk:
Personal Experiences with Indecision: Steffel shares her struggles with both minor and major decisions, highlighting that even experts in decision-making can face decision paralysis.
The Cinderella Analogy: She uses the story of Cinderella from “Into the Woods” as a metaphor for decision paralysis. Cinderella’s hesitation and subsequent entrapment by the tar symbolize how indecision can immobilize us.
Indecision in Everyday Life: Steffel points out common scenarios where people face indecision, like shopping or choosing flights, emphasizing how indecision can lead to missed opportunities and regrets.
Delegating Decisions: Drawing inspiration from Cinderella, Steffel advocates for delegating decisions to others as a practical solution to overcome decision paralysis. This approach helped her in personal situations, like choosing tea at Teavana.
Research on Delegating Decisions: Together with Eleanor Williams, Steffel conducted experiments showing that people are more likely to make a decision when they can delegate, especially when faced with a large array of choices.
Applications of Delegation in Policy: Steffel discusses her work with the White House and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where she applied these insights to help citizens make informed decisions about government benefits and prescription drug plans.
Delegating Beyond Expertise: The talk highlights that people don’t only delegate to experts; they are often willing to delegate to anyone willing to take responsibility, primarily to avoid the burden and regret of a tough choice.
Benefits of Delegation: Delegating decisions can reduce the stress and regret associated with making difficult choices, allowing people to move forward and make the most of the opportunities available to them.
Encouraging Decision Support Systems: Steffel urges the creation of support systems in various sectors, like retail, healthcare, and policymaking, to assist people in making informed decisions.
Personal and Societal Impact of Overcoming Decision Paralysis: Finally, she emphasizes the importance of overcoming decision paralysis not just for personal happiness and efficiency, but also for societal benefit, as it enables better utilization of resources and opportunities.
In summary, Steffel’s talk highlights the universality of decision paralysis and offers practical solutions, particularly the strategy of delegating decisions, to overcome it in both personal and professional contexts.