we have technologies, such as the Internet, personal digital assistants, computers, smartphones, iPads, and iPods, that allow us to send and receive music, videos, text messages, instant messages, and digital attachments, as well as set up our own social media pages, blogs, and websites.
A few people have the remarkable ability to scan and process enormous amounts of information quickly and accurately—but they are very few and far between. It doesn’t always mean that those people will make a good or even a timely decision. I once had a boss who insisted on amassing copious data and analyzing every possible aspect of a problem and the potential solutions, no matter how trivial the problem. He would write each chunk of data, option, and possible consequence on separate index cards and shuffle them around a table in his office like a battlefield commander planning an invasion. By the time he made a decision, either the problem had resolved itself or no one cared about it anymore.
Most of us have much smaller processing limits, and when those limits are reached, anxiety begins to build. This anxiety is described as perceived information overload, and it may not be good for your health. Researchers Shalini Misra and Daniel Stokols of the University of California, Irvine worked with nearly 500 college students to determine how they responded to perceived information overload.9 The students were to consider two sources of information over a six-week period: cyber-based and place-based. The cyber-based sources were those in which information flowed through the Internet and portable technologies. Place-based sources were those that did not involve electronic technologies but came instead from social interactions in physical settings at home, in the workplace, or in the community. These sources also included environmental pollution, noise, crowding, and commuting and traffic congestion.
At the beginning of the study, the participants completed questionnaires about their perceived information overload, perceived stress, health status, activities for contemplation and reflection, and their sensation-seeking levels. This last category was studied to test the notion of whether high sensation seekers would be more resistant to stress than low sensation seekers. Participants answered questions about their general health and identified any stressful life events (such as separation or divorce, illness, personal injury, or death of a family member) that occurred during the previous year. The survey on perceived information overload from cyber-based sources asked the participants if they: (1) were frequently overwhelmed with electronic messages and phone calls, (2) had too many instant messages, as well as Facebook and MySpace messages, (3) were pressured to respond quickly to such messages, (4) were spending too much time attending to their technology, and (5) received more messages than they could handle. Questions regarding place-based sources of information asked whether they (1) felt hassled by their commute to and from work, (2) were bothered by noisy work or home environments, (3) were overwhelmed by the demands of their workplace, and (4) had too little time for rest and recreational activities.
Six weeks later, the participants completed surveys on their perceived stress and overall health. For example, they were asked how often they had health problems in the previous three months and to identify specific symptoms they experienced during that time period, such as headaches, feelings of depression, acid indigestion, and insomnia. Participants who said they had high levels of cyber-based overload in the initial surveys reported in the follow-up surveys that they had higher levels of stress and more frequent and severe health problems. Curiously, the place-based information overload had no discernable impact on stress, but it did have a negative effect on health.
This study had some other interesting findings that executives may wish to ponder. First, individuals who said they were high sensation seekers reported lower levels of stress from cyber-based overload compared to those who said they were low sensation seekers. Second, participants experiencing high levels of cyber-based information overload said they had little time for contemplative and reflective activities. When working memory is crammed with information, there is little room left for self-reflection and for contemplating the consequences of pending decisions.
A survey of business managers in Britain reported by David Bawden of the Department of Information Science at the City University London had some surprising revelations.10 Two-thirds of these managers believed information overload had caused a loss of job satisfaction and damaged their personal relationships. About one-third believed it had damaged their health, and nearly half believed important decisions were delayed and adversely affected because of having too much information.
Bawden and his colleague Lyn Robinson later went on to describe several forms of strange behaviors that arise when people are faced with overwhelming amounts of information.11 Particularly amusing is the term infobesity, a sort of feasting excessively on information as though it were fast food. Treatments for this condition include information avoidance, which is essentially ignoring relevant and useful information because there is too much of it, and information withdrawal, which is keeping the number of information sources to a minimum.
Then there is satisficing, a coping strategy whereby one takes in just enough information to meet a specific need and ignores the rest. This could be considered a practical approach for one who is not aware of the full range of choices. Simply glean the information that is good enough and do not worry if the best information is unavailable. Many new-car buyers resort to satisficing rather than dealing with the dizzying amount of data on car models. They pick two or three possibilities based on their experience or a friend’s recommendation, and then they seek out some basic information about each: Is the gas mileage reasonable? How well does it survive crash tests? How does it look and feel behind the wheel? And that’s it!
Psychologist Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College argues that the bewildering variety of choices available in modern life (think not only car models, but the different kinds of cereals, jams, and blue jeans) causes anxiety and has paralyzing effects on our ability to make choices.12 To him, satisficing is a valid approach because it lowers stress and increases happiness. Although satisficing may be useful when making choices in the supermarket or department store, it may not be an appropriate method for making executive decisions in a business. There are risks to this seemingly sensible option. More effective choices may be overlooked, and the process may be reduced to information avoidance, a potential calamity in the marketing world. To prevent this, there should be a clear rationale to support any decisions made through satisficing.
The Impact of Information Overload on Decision Making
Scientific research on how we make decisions continually undermines the old notion that the more information we have about a situation, the better. As more information bombards us more often and more incessantly, we are discovering that it has detrimental effects on rational processing, problem solving, and decision making. Let’s take a look at what can happen.
Making No Decision
Not long ago, I visited a neighbor who had just bought a fifty-inch flat-screen television with an astounding array of features. The clarity and resolution of the picture were very impressive, and the multiple speakers enveloped me in bone-rattling sound. I was enthralled with this technology because my current television is a twelve-year-old, twenty-seven-inch set with a picture tube (remember those?) and two small front-facing speakers. It occurred to me that a set this old was probably going to fail soon—the perfect excuse to visit a local branch of a national electronics store. After fifteen minutes of roaming around the cavernous place, I found the multiple aisles of television sets. Counting brand names, models, picture sizes, and other options, there were more than 120 different choices. The variety was beyond my expectations, and the data paralyzed my thought processes. Fortunately, a rescue was imminent.
The television sales assistant approached and offered his help. He asked what kind of television set I currently owned and was surprised that it had the old-fashioned picture tube. Before I could say, “I’m just looking,” he proceeded to describe all the models and options. He made his preferences clear, explaining the technical data that proved how sensible his choices were for me. “Which one would
