Satisficing

Erin Sparks

Satisficing refers to making a decision with the goal of satisfying or fulfilling some acceptable minimum requirement (instead of choosing the best option). Decision makers who adopt a satisficing strategy do not evaluate all the available alternatives. Instead, they accept the first “good enough” option that they encounter. Satisficing is thought to be a useful decision-making strategy given that people live with limited information-processing capacity in a world of complicated and difficult choices. The cost of expending the resources required to evaluate every available option is thought to be greater than the additional value that will be gained by selecting the best option instead of the good enough option. Satisficing is typically discussed as an alternative to maximizing (maximizing the value of a decision by comparing the value of all options and selecting the best one). Historically, rational choice theory has strongly influenced how people study and think about decision ...

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