This episode is sponsored by Fabulous, a habit-forming app that helps you start building your ideal daily routine.

The first 100 people who click on the link in the description will get 25% OFF a Fabulous subscription. [♪ INTRO] Life is full of little decisions. One cookie or two?

Should I buy my friend this gift or that one? It never ends. But somehow, we manage to get things done without spending all of our time thinking over these choices.

That’s at least partially thanks to subconscious decision-making strategies that we use to lead us to favor one option over the other. One sometimes subconscious decision-making strategy is risk aversion. Risks are risky.

And we don’t like that. If you’ve felt FOMO, you know what I’m talking about. We don’t want to take a chance we’ll miss something enjoyable or lose something that would’ve benefited us.

Our skew toward stability and away from riskiness can be fueled by something called the certainty effect. People have a tendency to think of an outcome that definitely will happen as more favorable than risking one that only might happen. For example, if Jamal will definitely give you one cookie and Ana might give you two cookies, you’ll probably go with Jamal because it’s a sure bet.

But if Jamal’s one cookie is compared to Ricky’s beautiful painting, and they’re both sure bets, then it might not be the desirable choice anymore. Because you’re comparing it against something new, you’re now thinking about different qualities that it brings to the table. While the painting and the cookie could both make you happy, the painting would last longer than a cookie.

On the other hand, it won’t fill you up. So now there are new factors that you didn’t consider when the same cookie was up for offer in the previous comparison. And this is called the isolation effect.

It’s when you ignore what the things you’re comparing have in common so that you can make a decision based on how they’re different. Like, two cookies have everything that one cookie has … just more of it. But a painting has all kinds of different qualities that could bring you a totally different kind of happiness.

And there could be different considerations if you were comparing the cookie to, like, a basketball. So ultimately what’s most worthwhile is subjective to each person and to what it’s being compared against. And we often don’t change things up once we make a decision because change is uncertain, and we prefer things that we can count on.

Now that you know the terminology, you might catch yourself using these strategies. Or you could use them intentionally to speed up your future decision-making. Like I said earlier, life is full of little decisions.

And around this time of year, a lot of people start thinking about making resolutions, which can sometimes feel like a pretty big and overwhelming decision. But today’s sponsor, Fabulous, can help you succeed with your new year’s resolutions by turning them into a bunch of tiny habits that are easier to tackle and stick with. The Fabulous app is a customizable self-care and habit-forming app that was developed by behavioral scientists at Duke University.

It has daily coaching to help inspire you, and even guided journeys for common resolutions like exercising more or improving your sleep. Around 80 percent of new year’s resolutions get abandoned by March, so it’s helpful to think about your goals in a sustainable way. There’s no shortcut to changing habits, so if you want to give Fabulous a try, the first 100 people to click the link in the description will get 25% off a Fabulous subscription!

And, as always, thanks for watching this episode of SciShow! [♪ OUTRO]