Reading: Sentence Completion: Question 6

Psychologists who study self-control have become increasingly interested in a phenomenon known as decision fatigue: the observation that the quality of a person's choices tends to decline the more decisions that person has already made in a given period. The underlying idea is that deliberate, effortful choosing draws on a limited mental resource, and as that resource is used up, later decisions are made with less care, less analysis, or simply avoided altogether through impulsive selection of the easiest option.

Early laboratory demonstrations of this effect asked volunteers to make a long series of trivial choices, such as selecting between two consumer products, before then testing their self-control on an unrelated task, such as holding a hand in ice water for as long as possible. Volunteers who had made many prior choices consistently gave up sooner than volunteers who had instead spent an equivalent amount of time simply evaluating the same products without choosing between them. The researchers concluded that it was the act of choosing itself, rather than mere exposure to options, that consumed the limited resource.

Outside the laboratory, decision fatigue has been proposed as an explanation for a range of everyday patterns. Shoppers who must compare many similar items late in a long shopping trip often report simply grabbing a familiar brand rather than weighing the alternatives, and staff working in roles that require frequent case-by-case judgements (approving or declining routine applications, for instance) appear to apply stricter, more effortful scrutiny to cases reviewed early in a shift than to those reviewed near its end. Some organisations have responded by rearranging workflows so that the most consequential judgements are scheduled earlier, when decision-making capacity is presumed to be freshest, and by building in short breaks intended to allow the depleted resource to partially recover.

Critics caution that the size of the effect varies considerably between studies and that factors such as low blood glucose, general tiredness and boredom may all contribute to the same pattern of declining care, making it hard to isolate decision fatigue as a single, distinct cause.

Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

1. According to the passage, effortful choosing draws on a ______ mental resource.
2. In the early laboratory studies, volunteers first chose between two ______ before their self-control was tested.
3. Their self-control was then tested by asking them to hold a hand in ______ for as long as possible.
4. Volunteers who had already made many choices gave up ______ than those who had only evaluated the products.
5. Staff who make frequent case-by-case judgements often apply less rigorous scrutiny to cases reviewed near the end of a ______.
6. Critics point out that ______ such as low blood glucose may also help explain the same pattern of declining care.