the paralysis of analysis (or why chess is bad for you)

Jonah Lehrer, author of "How We Decide," was interviewed on NPR (Yes, I listen. You should, too.) about his new book that captures the essence of, well, choosing between boxes of Cheerios. Not really. But that's how it started.

"The revelation occurred in the cereal aisle of the supermarket," Lehrer told NPR host, Terry Gross. "I realized that there were 20 different kinds of Cheerios. There were original Cheerios. There were honey-nut Cheerios, apple-cinnamon, multigrain, the yogurt-with-the-berry thing. And then, of course, there are all the generic varieties of Cheerios.

And so I found myself spending literally a half an hour, 30 minutes, in the cereal aisle of the supermarket, trying to choose between boxes of Cheerios. And that's when I realized I had a problem, and I became really curious as to what was actually happening inside my head while I was struggling to make a decision"

He classifies himself as "a classic case of paralysis by analysis." He explains this as "simply thinking too much in the supermarket. I come up with long lists of reasons to prefer honey-nut Cheerios, and then I look at the apple-cinnamon Cheerios, and then I come up with long lists of reasons to prefer apple-cinnamon Cheerios. And it goes on and on like that. I'm stuck in this loop of self-consciousness, where I come up with reason after reason after reason."

As Gross points out, one of the crucial concepts Lehrer learned from his book-writing venture was that copious amounts of information (which we usually equate as good, even necessary) can easily translate to an overwhelmed and overloaded prefrontal cortex, the relatively frail division of our brain that's (ironically) responsible for "deliberate, rational decisions." Ergo, spending an exorbitant 30 minutes in the cereal aisle.

To expound even further--it's alright, I don't think you're employing your prefrontal cortex to read this--that specific area of our noggin can retain a mere 7 tid-bits of information at any given time. And it works more efficiently with less than that. Read, for example, a study explained in Lehrer's words:

"One of the studies I talk about in the book concerns a study done by Stanford psychologists who - they had two groups of people. One group they had memorize a two-digit number. The other group they had memorize a seven-digit number. Then they marched these two groups down the hall and gave them a choice between two snacks.

One snack was a rich, gooey slice of chocolate cake. The other snack was a responsible fruit salad. The people who memorized a two-digit number were twice as likely to choose the fruit salad as the people who memorized the seven-digit number, who were twice as likely to choose the chocolate cake. And the reason is that those extra five digits - doesn't seem like very much information at all, just five extra numbers - so overwhelmed the prefrontal cortex that there wasn't enough processing power left over to exert self-control.

So that gives us a sense of just how limited in capacity our brain actually is and, I think, points to the fact that we should absolutely be aware of these limitations."

Yes, limitations. This leads me to the second half of my story.

A twin-pair of Sundays ago, I asked my boyfriend to teach me how to play chess. And he did. He tried. But as we sat there, drawing out the inevitable "check mate" in which I found myself every time, I could have easily spent a generous 10 minutes on each move. (This was the real reason our battles of marble weaponry lasted more than 5 minutes.) I was experiencing paralysis of analysis. Granted, due to my inexperience with the infamous game, more than half of my cognitive energy was spent trying to remember what piece can move where and in what pattern. All in all, it was undoubtedly more than seven pieces of information, and my poor, prefrontal cortex was headed for a meltdown. I did eventually win a game, but that was only by taking play-by-play direction from my boyfriend (being a real-life pawn) in a challenge against his mom, which probably suggests my overload and consequential lapse in judgment. (Is it really a good idea to put your boyfriend's mom in "check mate" in only five moves? Fortunately, she's a sweetheart and didn't hold it against me.)

I've now spent a reasonable amount of time (less than 30 min.) evaluating all the above and reached a simple, either/or conclusion: Either chess is a game that's bad for you or I am very bad at the game.

[You can read or listen to the full Jonah Lehrer story at NPR.]