092514Norton.mp3

Every day we make hundreds of decisions, from the mundane (cream with your coffee?) to the ridiculously complex (top ten One Direction songs, in order of emotional impact?). Retailers pride themselves on offering customers what they want, and that happens to be a range of exotic choices, from which shoppers can select that one, shining, perfect thing.

But choice can also confound us, and the only thing that makes our temperature rise faster than a tough decision is watching someone else's choice paralysis. Ever been behind someone in the Dunkin' Donuts line who can't decide whether to get a French Cruller or a Boston Creme?

"When we're in line we're thinking, basically, 'How do you not know this?' It's (...) not the world's most complicated decision," Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton said on Boston Public Radio. "It doesn't seem like the kind of decision that should require this emotional drama."

Norton said we have an in-born stopwatch that dictates acceptable response times, from simple binary choices to complex, multi-faceted situations. Occasionally, we want people to take a long time deciding.

"Sometimes we just think that if you think longer about things, if I see you thinking about something, then I'll trust you more, and I'll think, 'Oh, that really was a decision that you made because you thought about it,'" Norton said. "It turns out that you can't just think quickly, or think slowly, and convince people that it's the right decision. You have to think the amount that they think is the right amount to think, in order for people to say, 'Wow, that guy made a really good choice.'"

Case in point: in a press conference earlier this month, President Obama admitted his administration hadn't made a decision about US involvement in Syria. "I don't want to put the cart before the horse," the President said. "We don't have a strategy yet." Obama took heat for the admission.

"We're okay with people taking time, if it seems like they're getting somewhere," Norton explained of the backlash to the President's statement. "Some people reacted to President Obama's statement as, 'We're just flailing around and we don't have any decision-making plan in process. Not to mention, we don't know what we're gonna do next.' I think that's part of why people reacted that way."

Norton noted that personal politics influence how we perceive leaders' decisions. If you are a diehard Republican, and a Republican leader casts a vote on a big bill, you're more likely to approve if that person made a quick decision, Norton said. If there's a mismatch of party affiliations, the outcome changes. "If they don't agree with you, and they [make a quick decision] from their gut, you think they're the dumbest person in the world," Norton said.

On a more practical level, Norton advised that everyday decisions should be made more or less automatically. "If you're the kind of person who takes three hours every morning deciding which web page to read, it's not a good use of your time," Norton said. "If the decision is simple and you're taking an enormous amount of time, probably you should just flip a coin."

What does Norton make of the classic choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream? "It doesn't really matter if you have chocolate or vanilla. It'll be fine" either way, Norton said. "We have maybe an hour of good brain time — if we're lucky! — in a given day. If you waste your hour of good brain time on trivial decisions, that's not a good use of your executive function. You want to be using it on things that are really important. (...) If it's what to have for lunch, it just doesn't matter. You can just close your eyes and grab it."

>> To hear the entire conversation with Michael Norton on Boston Public Radio, click the audio link above.