Looking Online for the Best Romantic Partner Reduces Decision Quality: The Moderating Role of Choice-Making Strategies

The Internet has become a means by which people expand their social networks and form close relationships. Wu and Chiou (2009) demonstrated that more search options triggered excessive searching, leading to poorer decision making and reduced selectivity in finding partners for online romantic relationships. Regarding the more-means-worse effect, they argued that more searching leads to worse choices by reducing users' cognitive resources, distracting them with irrelevant information, and reducing their ability to screen out inferior options. Expanding Simon's (1955) seminal theory, this research compared choice-making strategies of maximizers and satisficers on excessive searching, quality of final decisions, and selectivity. One hundred twelve adolescents with experiences of online romantic relationships participated in an experimental study. Participants were administered a scale that measured maximizing tendencies and were then assigned to receive either a small or a large number of options. Results indicated that the participants with high maximizing tendencies (i.e., maximizers) showed more pronounced searching than did those with low maximizing tendencies (i.e., satisficers). The negative effect of excessive searching on decision-making was more prominent for maximizers than for satisficers in terms of final choices and selectivity. These findings reveal that adopting maximizing strategies may increase vulnerability stemming from excessive searching when a large number of choices are available.