Mental exhaustion from making repeated decisions can lead humans
to avoid choices that require additional thinking, which often
involves maintaining the status quo. This tendency may result in
security and risk choices being influenced by extraneous
variables that should be irrelevant to the decision. Parole
Hearings and Meals In a paper titled Extraneous Factors in
Judicial Decisions, the researchers found that judges were more
likely to grant parole when the hearing was held shortly after a
meal. More specifically, “The likelihood of a favorable ruling
is greater at the very beginning of the work day or after a food
break than later in the sequence of cases.” The researchers
concluded that “when judges make repeated rulings, they show an
increased tendency to rule in favor of the status quo.” Though
the behavior could be the result of lower blood glucose levels,
researchers attributed the tendency primarily to mental
depletion. A brain tired of making choices might shun additional
workload by simply maintai