Less is More, Unless You Think about It
In 1968, Dietrich Braess formulated what is known as Braess’s Paradox when he noted that adding new roads to a travel network counter-intuitively led to more congestion. His observation sets up a general framework where an increase in choice decreases satisfaction/efficiency, and the paradox has a much wider application than traffic jams. Consider jam, for instance. A 1995 study conducted by Columbia University’s Sheena Iyengar found that, although drawn to a larger assortment of retail jams, customers were less likely to make a purchase than when presented with a smaller jam collection. Notice that the issue isn’t in the number of options; rather, it is the lack of information. Unable to taste-test all the jams (be it for a lack of time on the customer’s part or a limitation placed by the retailer itself) and make a fully-informed decision, customers prefer not buying any jam over risking an imperfect choice, leaving everyone (the jam-seeker and the jam-seller) ultimately worse off.
Whether you are in the market for a laptop or your college education, having more options translates to making a probably-less-satisfying decision, but what happens when you inject the situation with more information? Let’s revisit Braess’s example: the transportation network. According to Professor Anna Nagurney from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, it turns out Braess’s paradox “holds only for a specific range of demand.” At very high levels of demand, travelers abandon their user-optimizing behavior, letting a “wisdom of crowds” phenomenon take over and leaving “certain crossroads […] essentially empty of traffic.” In other words, at a certain point, the increasing awareness of Braess’s work paired with the ability to learn from experience (wisdom) negates the Paradox and results in the optimal outcome.
If Braess’s original scenario can be overturned, maybe there’s hope for me yet the next time I face CTB’s overwhelming menu.
References
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html?_r=0
(2) http://phys.org/news203665202.html