What’s the relationship between the Braess Paradox and the longevity of our health?
In the class, we have discussed an observation made by Dietrich Braess, which is more formally known as the Braess’s Paradox. Braess states that as the name of the observation suggests, adding one or more roads to a road network can slow down overall traffic flow through it. For me, as I’m sure with many others as well, the observation made by Braess was initially counterintuitive. In my head, it raised the question as to how adding more paths in which traffic can flow through in fact congest the overall traffic, not clear the overall traffic. However, I realized this observation can also be seen in many parts of our lives, when we have to make a decision in particular.
Think about the last time you had to make a decision, whether that might be as trivial as purchasing a toothbrush or as significant as deciding which college admission to accept. Or think about a time where you were given nothing but one option to choose from, and a time where countless numbers of options were given. How did these different circumstances make you feel? According to the article provided, which looks into how our body reacts in response to different decision making circumstances, they found that when the participants chose from more choices, making the “right” or “correct” decision begins to feel more crucial and, at the same time, more unattainable.more invested in the decision (Saltsman 2019). Consequently, repetition of these cardiac activities that occur due to choosing from many different options have shown its links to hypertension and several types of heart diseases (Saltsman 2019). Meaning, similar to how adding more paths, or options, can slow down the overall traffic flow in the example of Braess’s paradox, having more options to choose from affects us more or less the same way. While we might initially feel delighted and welcomed by all the different choices we are provided with at our local retail store or wherever it may be, an overwhelming number of options works to not only slow down our decision making, but ultimately constricts our blood flow the same way it hinders traffic.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90411925/having-too-many-choices-is-making-us-miserable