The Paradox of Choice & Default Options

The paradox of choice is a well-studied phenomenon in psychology in which people are worse at making a decision when confronted with too many choices. In modern times, we are confronted with more choices than ever before. Every time we scroll through our news feeds we are bombarded by dozens of ads, and our purchasing decisions now entail extensive lists of options online that must be compared. This deluge of choices can be paralyzing, especially given our obsession with not just finding the suitable choice, but rather the optimal choice. Fortunately, marketers and product designers can help prevent this choice overload through the use of default options.

Default options, as the name suggests, are predetermined decisions that consumers are nudged to make. This can help consumers make quicker decisions, as well as increase the likelihood that they’ll be happy with the decision they made. Default options can also help organizations have their desired choices be the ones that are picked. This works because when an option is made the default, research shows that people first think of why they should accept the default and reject the alternatives. One highly cited example is the use of default options for organ donation. Countries have found that having to opt out of being an organ donor drastically increases the organ donation rate, compared to countries that have an option to opt into being an organ donor. There are several examples of how these default options have been applied to the digital world, which I will outline below:

Google:

Here’s an example of a default option that has become so ingrained we hardly realize it was even made a default option. In the early 2000’s, Google made a deal with AOL, paying $50 million to become the default search engine. Even today, Google pays around $100 million every year to be the default search engine on Mozilla Firefox. Google has become such a default choice for us that many will never consider competitors with almost identical services such as Yahoo or Bing. 

Data Privacy:

Fast Company ran an experiment to see how default options would affect people’s willingness to share data on social media. They found that when the default was to share more data, and people had to opt out, they shared an average of 33% more data. As recent conversations have called into question the importance of data privacy on notable social media sites, this research can inform companies and policy makers on how to best protect people’s data. 

Personalized Defaults:

Research published in the Harvard Business Review looks at how defaults can be tailored to individuals in order to increase their efficacy. In the digital realm this is much easier to do, as increased data on customers can further tailor defaults and websites can dynamically adapt to this. Smart defaults adapt to demographic data such as age, gender, and location. Persistent defaults use data on previous individual decisions to make defaults that that individual should want. Finally, adaptive faults change in real time based on customer decisions, such as changing the defaults for future choices as a customer customizes their order.