The Paradox of Choice
Choices are wonderful things aren't they? It has been asked by people new to this country, though, why do we need 20 brands of toothpaste? The first chapter of "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz is titled 'Let's go Shopping' and covers this very issue:
85 brands and varieties of crackers
285 varieties of cookies
13 sports drinks
75 iced teas and adult drinks
61 varieties of suntan oil and sunblock
80 different pain reliever permutations
230 different soups
and so on.
He goes on to say: "Americans spend more time shopping than the members of any other society. Americans go to shopping centers about once a week, more often than they go to houses of worship, and Americans now have more shopping centers than high schools. In a recent survey, 93% of teenage girls surveyed said that shopping was their favorite activity. Matgure women also say they like shopping, but working women say that shopping is a hassle, as do most men. When asked to rank the pleasure they get from various activities, grocery shopping ranks next to last, and other shopping fifth from the bottom. And the trend over recent years is downward. Apparently, people are shopping more now but enjoying it less."
Our shopping habits have been studied, I suspect by those people who want to try and get us to buy more of their stuff than the other guy's. So how do we choose? You would think that the many choices would be of great interest to people who want to find the 'best' or the 'cheapest' and the options would just be ignored by people who don't care or who are pressed for time. But what seems logical doesn't bear out in studies: if you do a taste-test of something that comes in a multitude of flavors, for example, you don't want to put them all out. No, you need to structure your tasting station with just a few of the flavors if your purpose is to induce sales. A smaller array of choices works better than putting out the entire selection is shown in several consumer studies cited by the author. People go into overload with too many choices.
Anyway, that is how the book begins: it is full of the results of studies which show, time and again, that we don't react to lots of choices in the ways that "common sense" would dictate. So we want the very "best" or do we make do? Do we set up criteria and goals to guide our decisions, endlessly looking for the most satisfactory choice.
To jump to something of current importance, though, will the things and experiences we expect to make us happy actually do so and will that sense of satisfaction have a lasting benefit? What researchers have found is that we adapt: we feel so good when we come in from the heat of the day to an air-conditioned space but, after awhile, we don't notice it any more, no longer deriving that good feeling from it. This seems to happen with a lot of experiences, from new jobs to marriages to promotions. It was noted that the bad feeling of getting an adverse experience: a poor medical diagnosis, not getting an anticipated position, are also adapted to with time: the negative feeling doesn't last.
"So the more choices we have, the more effort goes into our decisions, and the more we expect to enjoy the benefits of those decisions. Adaptation, by dramatically truncating the duration of those benefits, puts us into a state of mind where the result just wasn't worth the effort. The more we invest in a decision, the more we expect to realize from our investment. And adaptation makes agonizing over decisions a bad investment."
Perhaps I could say that not having so many choices may lead to less dissatisfaction: if it doesn't work out it wasn't your fault, for example. But the bounty of choices has not made us any happier: we spend too much time on trying to make the best choice. So how do we mitigate this "adaptation" process which seems to dampen our long-term happiness with the decisions we make? Schwartz suggests that we be grateful for what we have: those people who practice gratitude are happier, more optimistic and just generally stay on track - they don't agonize over getting the best possible. At a certain point allow yourself to be satisfied and focus on how good things are rather than on what 'could have been.'
It sort of sounds like a prescription for a 'half full' glass.
85 brands and varieties of crackers
285 varieties of cookies
13 sports drinks
75 iced teas and adult drinks
61 varieties of suntan oil and sunblock
80 different pain reliever permutations
230 different soups
and so on.
He goes on to say: "Americans spend more time shopping than the members of any other society. Americans go to shopping centers about once a week, more often than they go to houses of worship, and Americans now have more shopping centers than high schools. In a recent survey, 93% of teenage girls surveyed said that shopping was their favorite activity. Matgure women also say they like shopping, but working women say that shopping is a hassle, as do most men. When asked to rank the pleasure they get from various activities, grocery shopping ranks next to last, and other shopping fifth from the bottom. And the trend over recent years is downward. Apparently, people are shopping more now but enjoying it less."
Our shopping habits have been studied, I suspect by those people who want to try and get us to buy more of their stuff than the other guy's. So how do we choose? You would think that the many choices would be of great interest to people who want to find the 'best' or the 'cheapest' and the options would just be ignored by people who don't care or who are pressed for time. But what seems logical doesn't bear out in studies: if you do a taste-test of something that comes in a multitude of flavors, for example, you don't want to put them all out. No, you need to structure your tasting station with just a few of the flavors if your purpose is to induce sales. A smaller array of choices works better than putting out the entire selection is shown in several consumer studies cited by the author. People go into overload with too many choices.
Anyway, that is how the book begins: it is full of the results of studies which show, time and again, that we don't react to lots of choices in the ways that "common sense" would dictate. So we want the very "best" or do we make do? Do we set up criteria and goals to guide our decisions, endlessly looking for the most satisfactory choice.
To jump to something of current importance, though, will the things and experiences we expect to make us happy actually do so and will that sense of satisfaction have a lasting benefit? What researchers have found is that we adapt: we feel so good when we come in from the heat of the day to an air-conditioned space but, after awhile, we don't notice it any more, no longer deriving that good feeling from it. This seems to happen with a lot of experiences, from new jobs to marriages to promotions. It was noted that the bad feeling of getting an adverse experience: a poor medical diagnosis, not getting an anticipated position, are also adapted to with time: the negative feeling doesn't last.
"So the more choices we have, the more effort goes into our decisions, and the more we expect to enjoy the benefits of those decisions. Adaptation, by dramatically truncating the duration of those benefits, puts us into a state of mind where the result just wasn't worth the effort. The more we invest in a decision, the more we expect to realize from our investment. And adaptation makes agonizing over decisions a bad investment."
Perhaps I could say that not having so many choices may lead to less dissatisfaction: if it doesn't work out it wasn't your fault, for example. But the bounty of choices has not made us any happier: we spend too much time on trying to make the best choice. So how do we mitigate this "adaptation" process which seems to dampen our long-term happiness with the decisions we make? Schwartz suggests that we be grateful for what we have: those people who practice gratitude are happier, more optimistic and just generally stay on track - they don't agonize over getting the best possible. At a certain point allow yourself to be satisfied and focus on how good things are rather than on what 'could have been.'
It sort of sounds like a prescription for a 'half full' glass.