Health

Why do(n't) people support being nudged towards healthier diets?

You may not realize it, but "nudge" has been used by businesses, policymakers and governments for years to prod the public into making different choices. Small changes in our environment can "nudge" us into different behaviors ...

Health

'No added sugar' rule is a good step, but the job's not done

Australia's food regulators must develop a comprehensive definition for added sugars in processed foods to enable consumers to make healthy choices, according to new research from The George Institute for Global Health, published ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

How emotions influence what adolescents eat

A new study by the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology—BIPS has investigated how emotional states influence the eating habits of children and adolescents and which interventions help to change unhealthy ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Alone but not lonely: How solitude boosts well-being

New research from the University of Reading sheds light on the complex relationship between time spent alone and mental health. The study, published in Scientific Reports, reveals that solitude has both benefits and costs ...

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Choice

Choice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options ("what would I do if ...?"), often a choice is made between real options, and followed by the corresponding action. For example, a route for a journey is chosen based on the preference of arriving at a given destination as soon as possible. The preferred (and therefore chosen) route is then derived from information about how long each of the possible routes take. This can be done by a route planner. If the preference is more complex, such as involving the scenery of the route, cognition and feeling are more intertwined, and the choice is less easy to delegate to a computer program or assistant.

More complex examples (often decisions that affect what a person thinks or their core beliefs) include choosing a lifestyle, religious affiliation, or political position.

Most people regard having choices as a good thing, though a severely limited or artificially restricted choice can lead to discomfort with choosing and possibly, an unsatisfactory outcome. In contrast, unlimited choice may lead to confusion, regret of the alternatives not taken, and indifference in an unstructured existence; and the illusion that choosing an object or a course leads necessarily to control of that object or course can cause psychological problems.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA