Decision-making is a complex process involving experience, emotions and will, which is why science has been studying the mechanisms involved in decision-making for many decades, and Hick’s Law explains this process in terms of time.
Hick’s Law is a principle discovered by William Edmund Hyman and Ray Hyman, which allows to measure how long it takes for someone to make a decision, states that the greater the number of alternatives and the greater the complexity or divergence of these alternatives, the time it will obviously take to make a decision. This time follows a logarithmic rule.
- In a literal sense.
- Hick’s law says: “The time it takes for a person to make a decision is proportional to the ‘entropy of the decision’.
- That is.
- The amount and complexity of the alternatives that exist.
- Decision-making entropy refers to the difficulties presented by possible options.
“I am not the product of my circumstances, I am the product of my decisions. ” – Steven Covey-
The history of Hick’s Law dates back to the late 19th century, when J. Merkel discovered that when a stimulus belongs to a larger group of stimuli, people take longer to react.
Hick and Hyman conducted a series of experiments, so they were able to determine that it was possible to calculate how long it took someone to make a decision, based on the number of serious alternatives the person had. in a mathematical formula.
Surprisingly, its main application was in the field of video games, video game creators shorten the time it takes to make decisions in a game to create tension, and also extend the time available to release that tension.
Some people think that the more time they spend making a decision, the more likely they are to make the right decision. However, this is not 100% true. Sometimes decisions are highly studied and may still be incorrect. The opposite is true, too.
Hick’s Law simply allows you to calculate the time it takes to make a decision using a universal mathematical formula, that is, it applies to all human beings. However, for the right decision, four factors come into play:
Hick’s law provides, above all, a valuable decision-making criterion, as noted, the greater the number of options, the longer it will take for the person to make a decision, so a smart strategy would be to minimize alternatives. to be considered.
A good way to do this is to create a list of all possible options, then classify them according to the order of risk they involve or the difficulty they may generate, specifying which option can bring the most benefits. very useful to get out of a block.
What happens next is the choice of an option that has a better balance between risks and benefits, in this way we avoid falling into a vicious circle in which any decision seems possible or viable, is a quick and effective way to address decisions. with a degree of complexity.