Have you ever found yourself stuck between two nearly identical options, unable to decide which one to choose? Perhaps you’re torn between two apartments, two health insurance plans, or two flavors of ice cream. Maybe you’re even struggling to decide between two suitors. You go back and forth, unable to settle on a single option, and you wonder if this indecision is a sign that you secretly want a bit of both.
However, research suggests that this is not the case. A study published in Management Science, conducted by researchers Margaret Foley and her coauthors, found that indecision between close options does not mean you secretly want to split your choice. In fact, the study discovered that people rarely choose to randomize, even when the option is free and visible.
Putting the Hidden Vote to the Test
To test this idea, 103 participants were asked to repeatedly choose between pairs of lotteries, some riskier but with higher prizes than others. Each pair was repeated four times, with repetitions popping up randomly as the experiment went on. As expected, choices were more inconsistent across repetitions when the two options were closer in subjective value.
Subjective value, in this case, was measured separately and depends on your attitude towards risk. The researchers then gave the same participants a chance to say, for each pair, exactly how they would want their four chances split between the two options: all four to one, three to one, two to two (in effect, a fair coin toss), one to three, or all four to the other. If wavering really reflects a hidden preference for splitting, a person’s actual pattern of repeated choices should line up with the split that same person said they wanted, pair by pair.
However, the results showed that this was not the case. Among the cases where participants stated a genuine wish to split their choice, the pattern of their repeated choices matched that stated wish only about 15 percent of the time. Wavering and wanting to split are correlated; both increase as two options get closer in value, but statistically, one does not predict the other well enough for them to be the same thing.
A Trick for When You’re Stuck
The researchers also discovered a practical trick for when you’re struggling to make a decision. When participants were given a costless, visible option to hand a choice over to an actual coin toss, they used it only about a quarter of the time, even for pairs where they were close to indifference. Most people simply picked one option and moved on.
In a further experiment, the researchers added a small, explicit cost to using the coin toss (from 10 cents to half a dollar), and the frequency of choosing it dropped sharply, to under 5 percent, even though the cost was often trivial next to what was at stake. This suggests that when you’re struggling to make a decision, it’s often better to just pick one option and move on, rather than trying to split the difference or use a coin toss.
So, the next time you find yourself stuck between two nearly identical options, remember that the time you spend struggling is itself informative: It tells you the options are close enough in value that the choice barely matters. That time is also valuable, and you’re wasting it. So, just notice what you’re leaning toward right now and go with it. If that doesn’t settle things, imagine you had to pay 10 dollars for someone else to flip a coin and decide for you. Our participants faced a real (if much smaller) version of that cost, and overwhelmingly chose not to pay it. Ask yourself the same question. If paying to have someone else pick for you doesn’t sound worth it, neither is the struggle. Pick.
