In the TV series The Good Place, the character Chidi Anagonye is defined by his inability to make even the simplest of decisions – from choosing what to eat, to proclaiming love for his soulmate. The very idea of making a choice often results in a serious stomach-ache. He is stuck in continued ‘analysis paralysis’.
We meet Chidi in the afterlife, and learn that his indecisiveness was the cause of his death. While standing in the street, endlessly equivocating on which bar to visit with his best friend, an air-conditioning unit from the apartment above falls on his head, killing him instantly.
“You know the sound that a fork makes in the garbage disposal? That’s the sound my brain makes all the time,” he says in one episode. And besides making himself unhappy, Chidi’s lack of confidence in his own judgements drives the people around him crazy.
If that sounds like an exaggerated version of you, then you are not alone: indecisiveness is a common trait. While some people come to very quick judgements, others struggle to weigh up the options – and may even try to avoid making a choice at all.
As Chidi shows, indecisiveness can be linked to problems like anxiety, yet recent research suggests that it can also have an upside – it protects us from common cognitive errors like confirmation bias, so that when the person does finally come to a judgement, it is generally wiser than those who jumped to a conclusion too quickly. The trick is to learn when to wait, and when to break through the inertia while it’s holding you back.
The enemy of good
Psychologists have various tools to measure indecisiveness. One of the most common questionnaires – the Frost Indecisiveness Scale – asks participants to rate a series of statements on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Using this scale, psychologists have shown that indecisiveness is often a product of perfectionism. Perfectionists are scared of the shame or regret that may come with making the wrong choice – and so they put off making decisions until they feel certain they are doing the right thing. (And in some cases, of course, they simply never reach that level of confidence.)
The frustration this brings can be a barrier to happiness; in general, the higher someone scores on the scale above, the lower they will score on measures of life satisfaction, according to a study by Eric Rassin, a professor of psychology at Erasmus University, in the Netherlands. They are less likely to endorse statements such as “the conditions of my life are excellent”, for example, or “if I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing”.
