© miodrag ignjatovic
Source: Talk Android
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Decision fatigue is a phrase popularised by John Tierney, and is the tendency for peoples’ decision making to become impaired as a result of having recently taken multiple decisions. Decision fatigue has been hypothesised to be a symptom, or a result of ego depletion. It differs from mental fatigue which describes the psychobiological state that results from a prolonged duration of demanding cognitive tasks, such as multi-tasking or switching between various tasks.
Some psychologists and economists use the term to describe impairments in decision making resulting specifically from a long duration of having to make decisions. Others view factors such as complexity of the decisions being made, repeated acts of self regulation, physiological fatigue, and sleep deprivation as implicated in the emergence of decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is thought to be a result of unconscious, psychobiological processes, and is a reaction to sustained cognitive, emotional and decisional load, as opposed to a trait or deficiency.
Decision fatigue is an emergent construct that has several possible applications in the fields of healthcare psychology, behavioural economics and healthcare policy. Behavioural attributes of decision fatigue tend to reflect an underlying state of ego depletion and may symbolise an unconscious method whereby individuals adapt their behaviour to prevent further depletion.
Individuals experiencing decision fatigue are more prone to avoidant behaviours, such as procrastination; Sjastad and Baumeister demonstrated that decision fatigued individuals are less willing to engage in planning, and were more avoidant, compared to controls. Decision fatigue may also induce passive behaviours, such as inaction and decision avoidance.
Furthermore, individuals experiencing decision fatigue may display less persistence when putting effort into decision making, and thus may be prone to choosing the ‘default’ option. They may also be prone to impulsive, erratic or short-sighted behaviour. Decision fatigue may also alter cognitive functioning. Some studies suggest that decision fatigue impairs cognitive abilities, especially executive functioning and reasoning abilities.
For example Kathleen Vohs and Roy Baumeister found that the more that people had made frequent and deliberate choices, the less able they were to persist on a math task, regardless of how tired they were or how long they spent on the task. There is evidence to suggest that decision fatigue may impact physiological endurance and self control.
This was demonstrated in a series of studies which showed that participants who had made a long series of choices were less able to tolerate a bad-tasting drink, and were less able to tolerate pain, compared to controls. This indicates that decision fatigue impairs physiological as well as cognitive self-control. Several studies have indicated that decision fatigue can increase reliance on mental shortcuts and biases.
A study by Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso from Columbia Business School showed that the percentage of favourable rulings by judges on parole boards in a prison dropped gradually (from around 65% to almost 0%) within each ‘decision session’ recorded, but would return to around 65% after a break. This suggests that judicial rulings were increasingly determined by biased assumptions as decision fatigue increased.
Another demonstration of the relationship between decision fatigue and increased susceptibility to biased decision making was that of journal editors reviewing manuscripts. This study found that when the number of manuscripts discussed per meeting increased from 10 – 19 to over 20, the rate of rejection increased from 38% to 44%.
When the number of manuscripts an editor had to read a day increased from 1-2 to 3 or more, the number of manuscripts rejected without peer review increased by 6%. This indicates that the greater decision fatigue editors experienced (whether alone or working in collaboration), the greater their bias towards rejecting manuscripts emerged. Decision fatigue increases consumers’ reliance on cognitive biases, such as anchoring and framing effects, making them more prone to quick, biased choices under conditions of mental exhaustion.
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