L ast year a poll found that British adults make, on average, 122 decisions every day. A decade earlier a professor at Columbia University found that Americans make about 70. In 2011 a survey of Britons commissioned by a video game developer put the figure at a damningly low 27, essentially painting British adults as a breed of permanently hungry morons most frequently vexed by issues such as “what to have for dinner”, “what to have for breakfast”, “what to have in my sandwich”, and “tea or coffee”. All three surveys polled precisely 2,000 people, suggesting that researchers into decision-making are terrified of making independent decisions.