Decision Fatigue

The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance 1 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 1: The Scarcity Mindset's Paradoxical Power 2 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 2: The Bandwidth Tax: Scarcity Makes You 'Dumber' 3 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 3: The Scarcity Trap: Borrowing from Tomorrow 4 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 4: The Necessity of Waste: Why Slack Saves You 5 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 5: The Attention Famine in the Content Feast ← Series Home 29% More Likely Low-income students enroll in college when helped with complex aid forms—removing cognitive snags ...

Pay Less, Feel Worse? The Counterintuitive Psychology of Your Monthly Subscriptions Take a quick look at your email inbox or bank statement. Chances are, it’s a testament to the modern subscription economy, with recurring charges for everything from streaming services and software to meal kits and groceries. We sign up for these services in the name of convenience, access, and simplicity, offloading routine purchases to an automated system. Yet, despite the clear benefits, many of us feel a sense of unease. There’s the low-grade anxiety of “subscription fatigue” or the surprising sting that comes from watching those small, regular payments leave our account. This creates a paradox: we subscribe to make life easier, but the very mechanism of recurring payments can create its own unique psychological burden. Why do we have such a deep psychological ambivalence toward our subscriptions? ...