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The concept that the more options the better might be challenged by a new report citing that more choices can lead to riskier decisions. According to a study done by researchers from the University of Warwick and the University of Lugano in Europe, they concluded that the presence of more choices could detrimentally affect people's decision making. The increase in possibilities leads to an increase in mental calculations, leading to more chances of mistakes influencing people to make high-risk choices.

The researchers from the United Kingdom and Switzerland observed how people reacted in their gambling game. The gambling game was designed so that the researchers can measure and evaluate the decision making process of the participants when they were presented with a large and small number of possibilities. The researchers recruited 64 volunteers. Each person was required to pick one box out of several presented on a computer screen. Each box represented the probability of winning a certain amount of money. The number of boxes either started off small and rapidly increased or vice versa. For example, certain participants started off seeing two boxes and ended up with 32, where as others started off with 32 boxes and finished with two.

The researchers found that a high percentage of the participants made decisions that would be considered high risk when they were presented with higher numbers of boxes in both scenarios. However, participants who started off with more boxes appeared to be better able to gather information than the other group. The researchers concluded that people's thought processing abilities tended to overestimate the gambles when there were more options available, causing them to end up risking more than they normally would have if the possibilities were fewer.

"It's not that people just give up and make random decisions when faced with a large number of options," Dr. Thomas Hills from the University of Warwick stated. Hills is part of the Department of Psychology at the school. "They are making rational decisions, but these decisions are based on faulty information gathering. The problem is with the information search strategies people use when faced with a large number of options."

The study suggests that people tended to search more and attempt to do more calculations regarding their decisions, which often leads to miscalculations and estimates. When presented with more options, the participants often ended up without any winnings at all.

The study was published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.