If you have a choice, you're spoiled for choice. We see this in many moments of our everyday lives: at the cheese bar in the supermarket, when buying a new car, or soon again at the ballot box in the elections - there is an overflow of options for everything. Can we actually still make a decision? And do we even want to? Prof. Florian Kaiser is a psychologist and explains in the new episode of "Wissen, wann du willst" why we can make the decision between the many gray mice simply by tossing a coin, why we become defiant when we have no choice, and what it might mean if participation in political elections is low.

Guest today

Florian Kaiser is Professor of Personality and Social Psychology at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. His research includes individual attitudes and their changes as well as behavioral control and evidence-based policy support. Thematically, Prof. Kaiser focuses mainly on environmental protection, environmental education for sustainable development, stress and health. He passes on his knowledge to students in lectures on differential and personality psychology as well as in the basic module on environmental psychology, among others.

Dr. Kaiser received his PhD from the University of Bern (Switzerland) in 1992 and his habilitation from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) in 1999. From 1994 to 1996, he was a post-graduate fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1996 to 1997 at the University of Trier. From 1998 to 2000, Dr. Kaiser was Assistant Professor of Human-Environment Relations at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. From 2000 to 2008, he was Associate Professor of Social and Environmental Psychology at Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

*the audio file is only available in German

The Podcast to Read

Intro voice: "Wissen, wann du wilst." The podcast about research at the University of Magdeburg.

Ina Götze: We make countless decisions every day - what to wear in the morning, whether to have pasta with cream sauce or perhaps a healthy salad for lunch, and what to watch on Netflix in the evening. Such small considerations are usually quite easy for us. It's the big decisions that we have a little trouble with now and then, such as which party to vote for. That's why I talked to our psychology Professor Florian Kaiser about why some decisions are so difficult for us, whether people who don't vote are perhaps antisocial, and why, for example, we decide completely differently than we normally do. My name is Ina Götze, I'm a web editor in the press office at Magdeburg University, and I'd like to welcome you to our 7th episode, "Know when you want." Welcome Professor Kaiser.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: A very good day to you Ms. Götze.

Ina Götze: He, who has the choice, is tortured, as the saying goes. What's the truth of that? Do we humans like having a choice at all, or would we rather not?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: In principle, this is easy to answer: As a rule, we want choices. That's sort of the key point. When we don't have a choice, we feel coerced, pushed, cornered, and we look for ways to regain that loss of control. Even if it's just to defy and say no.

Ina Götze: The little kids who then throw themselves on the floor in the supermarket.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Exactly. It even has a technical term: it's called 'reactance'.

Ina Götze: Okay. Now we have many choices in a lot of areas: There are countless types of cheese in the supermarket. We can usually travel wherever we want. We can develop or pursue our careers on many levels. Does it actually do us any good to have so many choices, or is that already too much?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: On which dimension good? Do you mean loss of time? The difficulty of deciding, does it put us in trouble in terms of stress? What do you mean by: Does it do us good?

Ina Götze: Does it do us any good ... so that we can still decide at all?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I think we are finding it increasingly difficult to decide. And, I agree with you there. But the flaw, I think, is not in the ability to decide, but in the attributes, that is, what all we associate with the decision. So it's easy to break that down. Most of our decisions are actually completely overloaded and intractable. For example, if I want to buy peanut butter, it's a certain flavor, a certain purpose that I want to satisfy with it. And then the decision is actually relatively simple. I go to the store and I'm looking for peanut butter. Now I'm faced with five...

Ina Götze: (laughs) ... crunchy or creamy?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Exactly.

Ina Götze: … without sugar, with sugar.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Exactly. And now comes the question, should it be a healthy one, should it be one that is additionally enriched with sugar, should it contain additional fatty substances, should it be a pure 'peanut butter' if possible. This is exactly the problem. There are, so to speak, side issues involved in the decision that are not actually part of the decision - do I want peanut butter or not? If there were only five different types of peanut butter, I could stand there and say I'll take any one. And, I'll grab it. So these side issues - should it be organically grown, should it be a socially acceptable one, the price has to be right - makes a decision multi-dimensional, so to speak. So you want to kill several birds with one stone. And that is usually impossible.

Ina Götze: Hmm, that means that even the small decisions are becoming increasingly difficult. I actually remember this: I was in Canada two years ago and in this one supermarket, there was a row of shelves, meters long, full from top to bottom with completely different kinds of chips. I didn't want any chips at the moment, thank God. It probably would have taken me until the next morning to decide on a chip variety.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Exactly.

Ina Götze: But personally, I'm also more the type who likes to weigh my decisions and then ask friends. Is that part of my personality? So is that because of that or does my personality have nothing to do with how well I can make decisions?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Personality could of course have something to do with how decisive someone is, but at the same time, I would probably relate it more to the situation... It depends on how much depends on the decision, so to speak: What are the consequences of a wrong decision? In addition, the more dramatic I estimate the consequences of a wrong decision, the more difficult it is for me, of course - if it's a question of money losses of a considerable magnitude or a life-and-death decision. Of course, the decision will then be very extensive, so to speak. I would then like to take all eventualities into account. So I think it's very much a question of: What is the decision about? I think it's more a question of personality if you treat small decisions as if they were such dramatic decisions.

Ina Götze: With the chips, it would have been like that, because if I had chosen the wrong chips, that would have been dramatic, then they wouldn't have tasted ... (laughs)

Prof. Florian Kaiser: (laughs) That would be exactly the problem, if you make the question of the right chips a fundamental problem, then you're probably not very decisive and then it's actually rather problematic.

Ina Götze: This year, we have the opportunity to make two major political decisions. It's a super election year: In June, the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt will be re-elected, and in September, the Bundestag. While we're on the subject of personality traits: Are people who don't vote antisocial?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: They're not antisocial, they're actually, strictly speaking, reasonable.

Ina Götze: Now I am curious. (laughs)

Prof. Florian Kaiser: As a rule, the individual decision has no weight at all in elections. And, that's why voting itself is actually a time-consuming action: I have to go somewhere. I have to remember to do it in time. Maybe I even have to pay postage - I'm sorry, I don't know if that's automatically included in the vote mail in Germany or if you have to pay for it yourself. So you have to make an effort to vote, at least you have to go to the mailbox. And, this effort can't really be justified with anything. If I am a vote of 20 million, so if you extrapolate to the Bundestag election, my single vote has hardly any weight. And from that point of view, it's actually almost unreasonable. And if you also start from the consequence: if you say, okay, I'm going to vote, and who's going to be the probable winner of the election? That's one of the major parties. Okay. What changes for me? Quite little. From this point of view, again: Why should I make the effort? That's sort of the one track. Of course, then one component is where you're aiming with your question: Is it anti-social - if we understand voting as an act in a community, of course you are right. We are all that community, and by refusing to go to the polls, I am pulling myself out of the community. I don't see myself then as a part that bears responsibility for the community, and that of course, as a symbol, is again, fatal to what voting means.

Ina Götze: So, for each individual, I can understand your argumentation, but for the community as well: To say that if everyone would use his voice, then it would have an influence ...

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Exactly. I think you have to take exactly these two motives into account when voting. On the one hand, it can be self-interest not to vote; on the other hand, if I give in to this self-interest, I make a clear statement that I don't care about this collective and that I'm not willing to do anything for it. And, that's just both implied in the choice.

Ina Götze: It is said that young voters in particular are dissatisfied with politics. Is that the case? So do age and gender really influence whether I vote?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I can't back that up with figures, but I suspect that age in particular plays a role. It's relatively easy to imagine when you think about how long it took to distinguish between the political goals and strategies of the various parties. And, especially in my younger years, I was certainly not that interested in acquiring this knowledge. I probably didn't listen to or watch the news regularly either, so I didn't really have a clear idea of who was aiming for what politically. And the bottom line is that when you've lived for 20 years in a country in which it doesn't matter who's in government - in which state or at the federal level - it's all just going through the motions, the decision is ultimately a choice between different shades of gray, because it's no longer about black or white decisions, but about different shades of gray. And especially at a young age, I don't think such a decision is very exciting. So, I would assume that young people in particular are more likely to say, why should I vote, it's about something, whether it's a bit light gray or a bit dark gray doesn't really matter to me. But, I don't want to blame young people for everything. I'm sure there are those who are highly interested. I mean, those were stereotypes, I readily admit.

Ina Götze: In eastern Germany, it's the older people who say, "Oh, why should I vote?" Some of them also wish for the GDR to return. Is it because they grew up in this system, in which they had few options and now perhaps can't cope with the freedom they have?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Or maybe they don't feel the election is an election at all. In a similar way to what I described earlier for young people, this may also be the case for people who are not familiar with a political system and suddenly it is no longer a question of white/black decisions, class enemy or class friend, but ultimately different priorities of social balance, social justice ideas, different preferences for economic development - but ultimately the same parameters that one wants to optimize, but with different values. Perhaps, the choice then appears to people as a choice between shades of gray. And what I said about young people may also apply to people who live in such circumstances while they are still young.

Ina Götze: Some of you may have noticed that the Corona virus has influenced our everyday life a bit (laughs). There is one decision we have to make less: where to go on vacation. That's something, but will the pandemic also influence our voting behavior?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I would say, let's wait for the decision or the situation, the events relatively shortly before the election, because: I already suspect that something like - in the technical language it's called 'recency effect' - so what happened recently, I think is highly relevant. So, what will be the events just before the elections, that will determine life, that will determine the news, and that could then usually decide for a lot of people who they vote for. So whoever comes across positively, whoever is obviously positively equipped with competence expectations, these are then the parties, the people who will then also be preferred. So I think it depends very much on the current situation. That would be my assessment.

Ina Götze: So we decide relatively spontaneously then even shortly beforehand who we ... who we choose?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Yes, that would be exactly my answer to the opening remark, how important are these elections to us. If they were really that important to us, we would probably be more concerned with party programs, with acquiring knowledge, with what they actually want, with who they actually are - very few of us are likely to sit down with a very elaborate strategy in order to decide for whom they will vote for or put a cross on which cadidate they want. And that, I think, is the crux of it. For most of us, it's a pretty low-threshold decision that seems to have little relevance to our everyday lives.

Ina Götze: Yes, that would be exactly my answer to the opening remark, how important are these elections to us. If they were really that important to us, we would probably be more concerned with party programs, with acquiring knowledge, with what they actually want, with who they actually are - very few of us are likely to sit down with a very elaborate strategy in order to decide for whom they will vote for or put a cross on which cadidate they want. And that, I think, is the crux of it. For most of us, it's a pretty low-threshold decision that seems to have little relevance to our everyday lives.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I would also see it that way, and the black mouse ultimately wants to... doesn't have a program to make democracy better, but their counter-offer is, "You should just cut the crap!" And, whether that's really attractive to most, I doubt it, it's still a bit of a mystery to me why they get so many votes in the East.

Ina Götze: It's probably the child, who throws himself on the floor and starts kicking.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: It probably has something to do with that reactance I mentioned at the beginning. If you have the feeling: Well, when the parties are in power, nothing significant will change anyway, then it's better to say no right away and vote for the no party.

Ina Götze: Yes, not the solution either. For me, democracy is also a privilege that generations before us have fought for, even that I, for example, am allowed to vote at all. Therefore, I use my oh so small voice and do it. But, why has the... that is, the attitude towards elections has changed so much in the last 20 years?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I think there are two answers to that. One is: Privilege is no longer experienced as a privilege, so if you actually grew up in a world - I mean, I'm over 60 now, I grew up in a democracy. It was nothing but a democracy, that's just the way it's always been. You get used to it. That's also deeply human, if you always have enough of everybody, you get used to having enough of everybody. And it's a bit similar with a privilege that you no longer recognize as a privilege. That's kind of the one answer. The second answer has to do with privilege itself. I think the privilege is a little bit thinned out I would say. Because the privilege is no longer that I get to make a decision about an issue, but ... For example, whether taxes should be raised, whether we should join the EU or leave it, whether a new infection control law should be introduced or not. I have no say in decisions, so I have no power over what is decided here. Instead, I only have the decision to delegate my power to someone who then decides for me. At a time when I do not know whether he or she will make this decision on my behalf, and at the same time, I also know that this person must be loyal not only to me, the voter, but also to the institution that made him or her electable. That, of course, is then the parties, and that, of course, massively thins out my privilege.

Ina Götze: Would citizens' votes perhaps remedy this? That the privilege should be seen more as a privilege again? So that, for example, when the decision comes up: Tax increase - yes or no? That the population is allowed to vote?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I think it would change quite a lot in Germany at the moment, as far as disenchantment with politics is concerned, if people could always say... You can no longer say: They always do what they want. So you could no longer reject the political decision, but it was a majority decision. And, we can then say the majority in Germany is just stupid, if a certain decision ... but we can no longer say the political elite decides for us. So, we could no longer keep the decision away from us. I think in the long run, it wouldn't work against disenchantment with politics. So, if I compare that with Switzerland, where election and voting participation is sometimes in the low 30 percent range and sometimes in the high 30 percent range, then I would say: It probably won't increase participation in democracy in the long term, but at the same time you have to say: Is it really a bad sign if 100 percent feel well represented by 30 percent voting behavior?

Ina Götze: So, you're saying that if only 30 percent vote, then the other 70 percent are actually quite happy...

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Obviously. The majority seems to have nothing against it; otherwise, they would recognize black and white, in which they also want to participate.

Ina Götze: Interesting thesis! Could parties and the media influence the fact that we like to have the choice again?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I think so! If politicians were prepared to actually share power with the population, if one really understood participation not only as talking about something, but also as passing on decision-making power, and that is ultimately what direct democracy is. To actually delegate the decision-making power downwards. Even if the decision is not very sophisticated, i.e. about details, but a yes-no decision. So everything has to be broken down into a yes-no decision.

Ina Götze: Let's get back to the personality trait. Does my personality also determine which party I vote for? In other words, do I vote for red, green, colorful, purple?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Well, here I can of course reproduce a saying attributed to Winston Churchill: "At 25 you're a liberal, at 35 you're a conservative." And I think this openness to new things, to ideas of justice, probably has something to do with idealism, and Churchill linked this to youth, but at the same time, what that means: whoever is not a liberal at 25 has no heart, and whoever is not a conservative at 35 has no brain. To take the quote a step further, we have to say that there are probably people who are more heart-driven and would vote for social justice and see that as the central issue, and then there are others who keep asking the rational question: And who is going to pay for this? And then you're relatively quickly back to more conservative ideas. And, I would imagine a similar situation with personality. There are, of course, more or less pro-socially minded people and then there are also always very rationalistic and reason-oriented ... and reason here only means thinking oriented to the consequences that is in no way meant in a different way. So: "Can we pay for it?" is a classic question of reason.

Ina Götze: In the last elections, we saw how quickly people can decide in favor of another party. If we are rather heart or head controlled, why do we vote? So why do we become swing voters? We haven't changed per se.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Let's say both components are part of our soul, right? On the one hand, we have compassion; on the other hand, we ask ourselves what is in it for us personally. In addition, exactly these two souls will influence our decision and that in combination with the topic, which is current now. If in the fall, for example, the question comes up that our national debt leads to inflation and this fear is huge, then these self-interest reflexes will probably come to the fore here rather than these more compassionate aspects.

Ina Götze: Now we all know the saying of our parents: "If Florian jumps off the bridge, you don't jump after him either." Is that true? Or does our social environment have an influence on who we vote for? In other words, whether we jump off the bridge or not.

Prof. Florian Kaiser: Even with the bridge example, I would say that if Florian jumps, then Hans can't afford not to jump. So social pressure is real, that's a fact. That is, when the majority does something and just when my behavior is also observable, so in the elections it's like that, as well as when it's in secret. However, if I have to express my opinion, as it were, on various political parties and the others hear me, then I will think twice about really praising the AfD in an association that is more social democratic in orientation. Of course, the social group has an influence on what I do, especially in public space. If it is publicly recognizable. On the other hand, you also have to say that the public I deal with is of course a selection of the entire public. So, my friends are also rather similarly polarized as I am. So, if I personally like the liberal democrats and praise their liberal attitude, I'm more likely to have a circle of friends around me who similarly positively evaluate a liberal attitude and accordingly it is to be expected that the voting behavior in my circle of friends is quite similar to my own voting behavior. So, there is such an interaction. On the one hand, of course, we also do what the others expect of us; on the other hand, the others who expect something are already a certain selection of people ... from the totality of people.

Ina Götze: I've also just gone through my circle of friends, and there's actually no one I'd argue with about politics, so of course you have topics of discussion, but in the general population we tick quite similarly. That's true. Finally, a personal question. With all your knowledge: Do you find it easy to make your own decisions, and if so, what advice do you have for our listeners?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: I think it's been pretty easy for me to decide so far. The most important thing, I would say, is to break the decision down to what I really want to decide. So if I want to buy a vehicle, for example, the basic decision is probably what does it have to be able to do, and a car can usually do certain things that a bike can't do. Once I have decided that a car has to be something like that because I have to cover longer distances with weight, the next question is probably how expensive can it be and then I actually have a relatively simple choice between probably about 15 products that are comparable in terms of price-performance ratio and then I can actually do a coin toss. So in my case, buying a car was always coupled with the social pressure of expectations for example. I live near Wolfsburg, so buying a car that doesn't belong to the Volkswagen family would have been an affront to my neighbors, so since we live in the area, it's actually always some vehicle from the Volkswagen family.

Ina Götze: Ok! So don't give into pressure or is that okay?

Prof. Florian Kaiser: That... why wouldn't you want to give in to that? Because I mean most of my neighbors work at Volkswagen, if I ... why would I even want to defend myself, which car I buy? It's not like they make bad cars, at least not much worse than other companies, so then I can still use that to make my neighbors friendly.

Ina Götze: Very nice! So we learn: Just break it down, then toss a coin and make the neighbors happy. That's how you make decisions here. Very nice! Thank you so, so much for being there, for sharing your knowledge with us. An important... or a good decision our listeners have already made, they listened to this podcast! That's something, after all. I was very happy that you were there. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to the next episode.

Intro voice: "Wissen, wann du wilst." The podcast about research at the University of Magdeburg.