Difficult choices: to agonize or not to agonize?

Social Research, Spring, 2007 by Edna Ullmann-Margalit

Notably, as a psychologist Lewin was also interested in the corresponding negative case, namely the minus-minus case. From his point of view, this case is not entirely symmetrical to the positive one. Here a person is envisaged standing between two negative valences of equal strength--a case of "Buridan's ass between two skunks." (The phrase was coined by the eminently quotable Kenneth Boulding.) Lewin sees this conflict as unstable since the person will tend to dissolve the equilibrium of forces by moving out of the conflict zone altogether--an option not regularly considered within rational choice theory. When faced rather than avoided, however, a minus-minus conflict leads to less rapid resolution than the plus-plus one, since an approach to either of the regions leads to stronger forces driving the person in the opposite direction. Where barriers exist which prevent exit, the equilibrium will be stable and the conflict unresolved. Still, "if the negative valences in the minus-minus conflict situation are sufficiently strong, the person will turn against the barriers in his attempts to escape" (333).

Rational choice theory uses the preference relation as its major building block. Being a partial ordering, the relation "person P prefers alternative a over alternative b" requires complementation. The equivalence relation of indifference is therefore a necessary component in the system. Moreover, the phenomenon of multiple equilibria brings the notion of picking--that is, choice without preference--to the fore, and does not let rational choice theorists ignore the existence of picking situations or remain indifferent to indifference. It is noteworthy however, that for nonpsychologically oriented rational choice theorists, the difference between a "plus-plus" case (that is, indifference between two good alternatives) and a "minus-minus" case (that is, indifference between two bad alternatives) makes no difference: they are indifferent to it.

Rational choice theory does not accept Leibniz's (et al.) view that picking locks the agent into an impasse, nor does it have any use for Lewin's theory of plus-plus or minus-minus conflict. At the same time, beyond counseling one to minimize the sum of decision costs and error costs by just picking, it does not itself have much of insight to offer on the issue of how to deal with picking situations. While picking thus presents a principled difficulty of sorts to rational choice theory, it should not be concluded however that cases of picking count as cases of difficult choices within that theory. After all, picking situations do not typically involve consequences of significant moment, nor do such situations typically involve a clash of values or require inordinate amounts of time to handle. On the contrary, to the extent that one may generalize about them, the generalization will likely be that picking cases typically involves "small decisions" of the can of Coke variety. (2)

Big Decisions

* Shall I marry Ann?

* Shall I quit my job as a high-tech executive and become a Buddhist monk?