Are We Better Decision Makers Today?

The pressure's on the screen
To sell you things that you don't need
It's too much information for me
--Duran Duran

The current environment offers more information than any previous period. Because decision-making is generally thought to be better when it is 'informed,' one would think that we are presently making the best decisions in the history of mankind.

Yet, it can be argued that decision-making quality has not improved in proportion to the increase in information. Some might even argue the opposite--that the general quality of decisions made today is worse than those of our predecessors.

What might explain such a phenomenon--that today's decisions are generally not improving at the rate of information increase? Here are a few propositions:

Information overload. The quantity of information available exceeds our cognitive capacity for processing it.

Not enough relevant information. Although more information is available today, it is mostly trivial and largely not useful for making the decisions we face.

Competitive negation. To the extent that decisions help us compete for resources, the gains possible from better information are competed away by rivals employing similar technology. This might be particularly true in organizational environments.

Misinformation. Channels convey misleading information that, when utilized, reduces decision-making quality.

False premise. The proposed relationship between information and decision-making is invalid. Rather than drawing on rich information pools for decisions, individuals prefer decision-making processes that employ little information.