By Duncan Kinney 
The Paradox of Choice explores a paralyzing but simple problem. Is too much choice a bad thing?
Published in 2004 and written by American psychologist Barry Schwartz, the overwhelming verdict is yes, too much choice is a bad thing. As counterintuitive as that idea may be, Schwartz has put his finger on why so many things seem wrong with our world despite the unabashed comfort in which we live.
Schwartz wrote the book to explain why he felt terrible after buying a new pair of jeans. As Schwartz puts it, buying jeans used to take five minutes, “Now it was a complex decision in which I was forced to invest time, energy and no small amount of self-doubt, anxiety and dread.”
Schwartz is not the most talented writer and there is a lot of jargon and studies to wade through, but he’s figured something out here. What he’s saying just makes sense. Maybe watching MTV’s Cribs isn’t the best idea.
While buying jeans may be trivial as the number of choices goes up for important things like jobs, romantic partners and investing, negative aspects begin to appear. “Choice no longer liberates, it debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize,” says Schwartz.
In the book, Schwartz brings up a study done on voluntary retirement plans. For every 10 mutual funds an employer offered, the rate of participation went down two per cent. So, if you were an employer and you offered 50 mutual funds to your employees, 10 per cent would not participate. If you offered only five mutual funds, only one per cent would not participate. In many of these cases the employer would match the employees contribution at up to $5000 a year but, regardless, the more choice that was offered, the less people signed up.
Here’s another example from the book: A display was set up at a gourmet food store featuring a line of exotic, high-quality jams. Customers could come by and taste the samples and were given a coupon for a dollar off the jam. They ran this test with two different conditions: one with six jams, the other with 24 jams. The results were again, incredible.
“Thirty per cent of the people exposed to the smaller amount of jams actually bought a jar; only three per cent of those exposed to the large array of jams did so.”
This is not to say that if we had no choice we would be happy. Schwartz argues that you run into problems at both ends of the choice spectrum.
His insights into regret (both actual and potential), expectations, missed opportunities, maximizing vs. satisficing and adaptation are spot on.
So how do we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of choice? The prescriptions offered from Schwartz are quite simple. Be grateful, control your expectations, make your decisions non-reversible, regret less, curtail your social comparisons and learn to love constraints. None of what he offers is groundbreaking stuff, but if applied, you might find yourself a little happier at the end of the day, both professionally and personally.
So what are you spending your time on? How long do you need to compare labels at a grocery store? When have you visited enough clothing stores? From your personal to your professional life, this book has some valuable insight. I recommend it.
View his TED talk below. It’s a solid introduction to the concepts in his book.
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