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Abstract
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Contrary to traditional economics assumption that having more options for choice is better, many papers in behavioural economics, marketing, and psychology have shown that having more alternatives to choose from can deteriorate choice quality. As a solution to this choice overload problem, behavioural economists have proposed reducing the number of alternatives available to a chooser, or to use nudges that guide people to select presumably “better” alternatives. In this paper, we take a different approach and suggest how people can make better choices autonomously. Using an understanding of how value representations in the brain determine choice accuracy, we design three choice procedures to improve choice quality without reducing the range of options available. Using a within-subject experiment, we test how our procedures compare to the most commonly used procedure, simply picking the preferred option. We find that each of our choice procedures increases the probability that a participant will correctly choose their independently identified favourite from the choice set. We show that this leads to a significant decrease in the monetary cost of mistakes. Our paper provides simple alternative choice procedures which overcome choice overload and maintain the autonomy of choice without reducing the benefit of having a variety of options to choose from.
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