Satisficing
What is Satisficing?
Satisficing is searching until you find an option that clears a good-enough standard, then stopping, instead of comparing every option to find the best.
The word blends satisfy and suffice, and it comes from Herbert Simon's account of bounded rationality. A satisficer sets an aspiration level, the minimum an option must meet, then takes the first option that clears it. This is often the smarter policy, because searching costs time and attention: checking every apartment in a city to find the perfect one can cost more than the improvement is worth. Aspiration levels adjust with experience, rising after easy successes and falling after a run of rejections, which is how job seekers and home buyers revise what they will accept. Satisficing is a specific search rule you can watch someone follow, while bounded rationality is the broader claim about limited information, time and computing power that makes such rules sensible.
Satisficing: a worked example
A student needs a used laptop under $400 with at least 16GB of memory. Comparing all 60 listings would take 4 minutes each, so 60 × 4 = 240 minutes, and at $15 an hour that time is worth 4 × $15 = $60. Instead they buy the first listing that clears both conditions, reaching it after 7 checks, or 28 minutes and about $7 of time. The cheapest qualifying laptop in the full set was $370 and they paid $400, so stopping early cost $30 on price while saving $60 − $7 = $53 of time, a net gain of $23.
The mistake students make with satisficing
Students read satisficing as settling for something bad. The standard is 'good enough' by the chooser's own aspiration level, which can be very high; a satisficer looking for a house may insist on four hard conditions and simply stop at the first house meeting all four. The other error is treating it as irrational. Once you count the cost of searching, stopping early is frequently the option that maximizes net benefit.
Satisficing questions
What is the difference between satisficing and maximizing?
A maximizer compares all available options and picks the best one, while a satisficer stops at the first option that meets a preset standard. Maximizing gives a better item in principle but costs far more search time and often produces more regret afterward. Satisficing gives a slightly worse item much faster, which can be the higher net payoff once search costs are counted.
Who came up with satisficing?
Herbert Simon introduced satisficing as part of his work on bounded rationality. He argued that real decision-makers face limits on information, time and computing ability, so they use rules that produce workable answers instead of optimal ones. The term merges the words satisfy and suffice.
Is satisficing rational?
Satisficing is rational once the cost of searching is included in the problem, since more comparison consumes time and attention that have real value. A rule that stops early can deliver a higher net benefit than one that finds the very best option after an exhausting search. It only looks irrational if you assume gathering information is free.
Related terms
Common comparisons
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