ABSTRACT
Managing choice overload is critical for both student satisfaction and performance. When students choose from options tailored to their abilities and prior knowledge levels, they are both more satisfied and learn more effectively than when presented with too many or too few choices. Assume a set of choices about different ways to study a topic with no dominant option—i.e., all options are superficially equally attractive. When students are new to the topic, they are more likely to make poor choices and experience high post-choice regret. They benefit from minimal or no choice. When students are familiar with topic, they are likely to make reasonably good choices and experience moderate post-choice regret. When people are under stress—e.g., high-stakes testing or public performances—increasing the complexity or number of options decreases performance, especially for concentration-intensive activities like creativity and problem solving. This has implications for both time-based testing and extrinsic rewards, both of which increase anxiety levels and degrade performance on complex tasks.
