Can You Have Too Much Information?

We live in a world of big data. We are all collecting information, compiling it and then trying to work out how to use it to our best advantage.

So of course we want to see all the information available and then some, before a decision is made. The more information we have the happier and more confident we feel in our actions. After all, you can never have too much information.

Can you have too much information?

In the 1960’s Stuart Oskamp carried out an experiment on a group of psychologists:

He gave them all a case study about Joseph Kidd, a 29-year-old man who was experiencing “adolescent maladjustment”. The case study came in four parts:

1. Joseph Kidd was introduced as a war veteran who worked in a florists
2. Joseph’s childhood up to the age of 12 was discussed
3. Joseph’s further education was shared
4. Finally Joseph’s experience in Vietnam was detailed

After each part of the case study the psychologists provided two pieces of information:

• The answers to a multiple-choice questionnaire about Joseph’s condition
• An estimate of how accurate they thought those answers were

More information gives greater confidence

As you would expect, as the psychologists were given progressively more and more information their certainty in their diagnoses increased. They became more and more confident.

But it doesn’t improve accuracy

But it didn’t improve the accuracy of their diagnoses one bit.

As the information became richer the psychologists went back over their existing answers, progressively refining and changing them, but their accuracy remained static.

So you can have too much information

Having more and more data to play with has three downsides:

1. It takes time and effort to acquire and process information
2. It becomes more and more difficult to see the wood from the trees
3. (And most worrying) Lots of data leads to overconfidence.

To twist an old adage “overconfidence comes before a fall.”

So how do you cope in a data rich world?

As with most things the Pareto principle comes into play. Some of the information we have is vitally important, but most of it is negligible.

So the trick is to be clear about what the data is that you need before you start, not continually play with and add to the information you have.

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Image by Alaskan Woman