A couple things leaped out at me reading this.<p>What about insulin resistance? Do people with high insulin resistance have less of an effect from sugary snacks?<p>On the flip side, how about exercise? Do people with a lot of sugar stored in muscles and a more optimum processing of sugar do better on these things?<p>To put this more generally, the author seemed to be reporting from a deterministic viewpoint, i.e., whatever you eat and these random life scheduling events are causing decision fatigue. Is there nothing an individual can do (aside from the briefly-described coping mechanisms) My gut feeling tells me this is not as black-and-white as it is made out to be. Hopefully there will be a lot of future research in this area. It's a fascinating topic.
The article was written by one of the coauthors of Willpower (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength/dp/1594203075" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human...</a>). I read this book last week and it was <i>terrific</i>. A great blend of fascinating studies and practical advice. Also, while many pop psych books rehash the same studies over and over, Willpower featured many results that I had not encountered before, like these findings about parole hearings. Highly recommended book.
Interesting that they mention the Dell website for decision making. 4 times this year I've decided to purchase a new computer and spent hours trying to figure out what to buy from the Dell website. I have yet to upgrade.
One of the biases at work is described here: <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/58y/the_bias_you_didnt_expect/" rel="nofollow">http://lesswrong.com/lw/58y/the_bias_you_didnt_expect/</a><p>Simply put, the judge is being harsher as the time since his last meal grows longer.
> <i>His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. ...they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices.</i><p>This rung a bell for me because I've noticed it's often easier to enforce a rule on myself if it's A) an actual rule and B) pre-decided (by me). It's not that I'm handing over the decision-making to anyone else. It's that I've set myself a rule (like, "no Facebook at work", a personal choice, not imposed by my job), so I'm not deciding <i>right now</i> "do I have time to check FB? Will it suck me in too far?" and so on. Looking back over my various self-improvement "diets" (usually more technological than food-related) I can see that the most successful ones were those for which I could set a hard-and-fast rule and for which I could convince myself that "the rule is set, can't break it now".<p>Which is, of course, <i>still</i> a mental discipline, and a nontrivial one. But it's easier than the ones that involve more deciding on the spot, and a lot easier than the ones where I think, "I will <i>try</i> to <i>mostly</i> avoid...", which usually don't last very long. I'd never really thought of that in terms of number of <i>decisions</i> before, or decision fatigue, but it's an excellent explanation for a phenomenon I was already pretty familiar with.
The issue of parole isn't particular interesting. But decision fatigue is intriguing. I think a more interesting pitch for this would be just 'Decision fatigue'.
That was really interesting and the title should've been different. I assumed it was the same story from a few months ago about the statistical likelihood of parole on the time of day but it's far more than that.<p>Three things sprung to mind:<p>The first is that I've often said I like the food we get at Google because food is, for me, a bunch of decisions I just don't care about. Where to go? What to order from the menu? How much to tip (if appropriate)?<p>Providing your employees with food seems to directly address decision fatigue.<p>Google rose to a prominence in an era of portal pages. Yahoo in particular had a home page without hundreds of links. Google presented you with a logo, a text box, two buttons and <50 words of text. What to do on such a page involves less decision making.<p>In the 90s there were lots of experiments with directories. Yahoo had one. Think about this: typing in a search involves one decision. Finding something in a directory involves one decision at each step.<p>The second thing that occurred to me was Apple. Apple is famous for making decisions for its customers. Many people rail against this lack of control. I personally appreciate it.<p>Consider: with Windows you need to make lots of decisions like whether or not you need to have security software, what antivirus solution to get, what program to use to play music, etc. With a Mac (and especially an iDevice) most of those choices are made for you.<p>Similarly the Apple Store is famous for its low number of choices (compare buying a Mac to buying any PC online).<p>Could it be that this making decisions for customers is part of the intense loyalty many have for Apple products?<p>The third was the sociological impacts of decision fatigue. Organized religion and government tell people what to do. They give people a set of morals and laws (respectively) to follow rather than forcing people to think through the consequences. Decision fatigue is a new angle to this (at least for me).<p>Lastly the impacts of poverty were a particularly refreshing angle. As a software engineer I don't really need to make day-to-day tradeoffs in groceries, what I can eat and the like so I just don't suffer from that kind of fatigue.<p>EDIT: two more interesting aspects to this occurred to me.<p>The education system in the last few decades has emphasized creativity and expression. This is part of the reason why many countries have abandoned school uniforms. While many laud the benefits of self-expression from, say, high school students being able to wear what they want, what about the consequences in terms of decision fatigue?<p>High school is stressful for most people. Add to that the stress of deciding what to wear, how to present oneself and so on and you can argue it's a contributing factor to poor decision-making by teens, no?<p>The second is on leadership. Leaders make decisions, obviating the need for followers to weigh up choices. Could this be part of why so many of us are so eager to follow? I remember a scene from an early Mad Men episode where Don was saying that what most people crave is to be told that whatever they're doing is OK. We crave that affirmation. I wonder at the decision fatigue implications of this.<p>Similarly, what about relationships? Couples often get to the point of what "we" decided to do. Could part of the advantage of a relationship be that you greatly reduce the number of decisions that you personally need to make?
I have not seen research on the subject, but I expect that use of commitment devices can reduce decision fatigue. Steven King's story "Quitter's, Inc." gives an extreme example of the efficacy of commitment devices, but a more mundane example might be making an agreement with a friend to pay them $100 for each day you cheat on your diet in the next week. If you're an honest person, you won't be tempted by the thought of cheating, since that slice of cake won't be worth $100 to you. You don't have to constantly decide whether to cheat on your diet; you only have to decide once per week (or per month, or however long of a term you set for your "commitment contract"). What's more, decisions pertaining to the use of commitment devices seem to be made by an aspect of you that looks out for your long-term welfare, not the part that simply wants a donut now.
From the PNAS article (costs $10): "the ordinal position of cases is, with rare exception, determined by the arrival time of the prisoner’s attorney."<p>Although the researchers claim otherwise, I'm sure that eager and optimistic attorneys arrive for early slots. Prisoners expecting a favorable hearing probably demand that their attorneys be there early. This needs a properly randomized controlled experiment.
I wonder what the optimal fatigue level is for your potential customer. Is it when they are more worn down and willing to go along with your recommendations or when they are less worn down and they have a more satisfactory experience making choices that are right for them?