I’ve been reading about maximizers and satisficers, and I’m interested to see where LessWrong people fall on the scale. I predict it’ll be signficantly on the maximizer side of things.
A maximizer is someone who always tries to make the best choice possible, and as a result often takes a long time to make choices and feels regret for the choice they do make (‘could I have made a better one?‘). However, their choices tend to be judged as better, eg. maximizers tend to get jobs with higher incomes and better working conditions, but to be less happy with them anyway. A satisficer is someone who tries to make a ‘good enough’ choice—they tend to make choices faster and be happier with them, despite the choices being judged (generally) as worse than those of maximizers.
The quiz seems to target at people who are different then me. I don’t watch TV so, it’s hard for my to give an answer about channel surfing. I don’t listen to the radio. The same goes for renting videos.
That quiz looks like it could use an update to fit modern society. It was hard to answer questions about “channel surfing” or “renting videos” in the modern era of hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. Also, thinking back to the days of actual video rental stores, it was much easier to choose a movie there than it is to choose one on Netflix. Possibly because the Netflix selections tends towards “second rate movies I’ve never heard of OR first rate movies that I’ve already watched or am not interested in”)
Anyways, I am a natural maximizer, which causes lots of stress towards decisions, so I’ve trained myself towards being a satisficer. I often try to think of decisions in the framework of “it doesn’t matter that much WHAT I decide to do here, so long as I just make a decision and move forward with it”.
I think about research where they show that the hardest decisions are the least important (if it was obvious which option was significantly better, then it wouldn’t be a hard decision.) I think about research where they show that people are happier with decisions when they can’t back out of them, so don’t second-guess them. I think about cost-benefit analysis and how maximizing that particular decision probably isn’t worth the time or stress.
A specific example: I tend to have trouble deciding what to order at restaurants. Knowing that whatever they serve at a restaurant is going to be relatively good, it’s not that important what I decide. So when the waitress asks if everyone is ready to order I say “yes”, even though I’m not ready, knowing that I will have to choose SOMETHING when it gets to me, and in reality I would be happy with any of the options.
You mean alternately picking 3 and 4? I was momentarily puzzled because seven is an odd number but I assume that’s what you mean. If so, hmm, that is odd.
It’s not necessarily odd for neutral answers to count as “maximizing tendencies”—perhaps most people lean distinctly towards satisficing in the situations described by the questions.
Derp derp derp. Clearly I need to review the difference between odd and even numbers.
A good point about the maximisation tendencies, too, although it strikes me as a little implausible that this was deliberate on the part of the quiz’s designer(s).
I’ve been reading about maximizers and satisficers, and I’m interested to see where LessWrong people fall on the scale. I predict it’ll be signficantly on the maximizer side of things.
A maximizer is someone who always tries to make the best choice possible, and as a result often takes a long time to make choices and feels regret for the choice they do make (‘could I have made a better one?‘). However, their choices tend to be judged as better, eg. maximizers tend to get jobs with higher incomes and better working conditions, but to be less happy with them anyway. A satisficer is someone who tries to make a ‘good enough’ choice—they tend to make choices faster and be happier with them, despite the choices being judged (generally) as worse than those of maximizers.
If you want, take this quiz
And put your score into the poll below: [pollid:682]
I wonder what the person who submitted the number 1488 was thinking. (Maximizing their answer, perhaps.)
The quiz seems to target at people who are different then me. I don’t watch TV so, it’s hard for my to give an answer about channel surfing. I don’t listen to the radio. The same goes for renting videos.
That quiz looks like it could use an update to fit modern society. It was hard to answer questions about “channel surfing” or “renting videos” in the modern era of hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. Also, thinking back to the days of actual video rental stores, it was much easier to choose a movie there than it is to choose one on Netflix. Possibly because the Netflix selections tends towards “second rate movies I’ve never heard of OR first rate movies that I’ve already watched or am not interested in”)
Anyways, I am a natural maximizer, which causes lots of stress towards decisions, so I’ve trained myself towards being a satisficer. I often try to think of decisions in the framework of “it doesn’t matter that much WHAT I decide to do here, so long as I just make a decision and move forward with it”.
I think about research where they show that the hardest decisions are the least important (if it was obvious which option was significantly better, then it wouldn’t be a hard decision.) I think about research where they show that people are happier with decisions when they can’t back out of them, so don’t second-guess them. I think about cost-benefit analysis and how maximizing that particular decision probably isn’t worth the time or stress.
A specific example: I tend to have trouble deciding what to order at restaurants. Knowing that whatever they serve at a restaurant is going to be relatively good, it’s not that important what I decide. So when the waitress asks if everyone is ready to order I say “yes”, even though I’m not ready, knowing that I will have to choose SOMETHING when it gets to me, and in reality I would be happy with any of the options.
Giving neutral answers to every question is ‘maximizer tendencies’, which seems odd.
You mean alternately picking 3 and 4? I was momentarily puzzled because seven is an odd number but I assume that’s what you mean. If so, hmm, that is odd.
Neutral would mean 4 for each one. (123 4 567.)
It’s not necessarily odd for neutral answers to count as “maximizing tendencies”—perhaps most people lean distinctly towards satisficing in the situations described by the questions.
Derp derp derp. Clearly I need to review the difference between odd and even numbers.
A good point about the maximisation tendencies, too, although it strikes me as a little implausible that this was deliberate on the part of the quiz’s designer(s).