The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

by Barry Schwartz

He suggests that instead of being fetishistic about freedom of choice, we should ask ourselves whether it nourishes us or deprives us, whether it makes us mobile or hems us in, whether it enhances self-respect or diminishes it, and whether it enables us to participate in our communities or prevents us from doing so.

we make the most of our freedoms by learning to make good choices about the things that matter, while at the same time unburdening ourselves from too much concern about the things that don’t.

“at the end of the day, we’re so caught up in doing, there’s no time to stop and think. Or to take care of our own wants and needs.”

Perhaps confidence in the market is justified. But even if it is, it shifts the burden of making decisions from the government to the individual.

“Beauty used to be a gift bestowed upon the few for the rest of us to admire. Today it’s an achievement, and homeliness is not just misfortune but a failure.”

what we remember about the pleasurable quality of our past experiences is almost entirely determined by two things: how the experiences felt when they were at their peak (best or worst), and how they felt when they ended. This “peak-end” rule of Kahneman’s is what we use to summarize the experience, and then we rely on that summary later to remind ourselves of how the experience felt.

The discrepancy between logic and memory suggests that we don’t always know what we want.

neither our predictions about how we will feel after an experience nor our memories of how we did feel during the experience are very accurate reflections of how we actually do feel while the experience is occurring. And yet it is memories of the past and expectations for the future that govern our choices.

Thus the growth of options and opportunities for choice has three, related, unfortunate effects. It means that decisions require more effort. It makes mistakes more likely. It makes the psychological consequences of mistakes more severe.

The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. A satisficer has criteria and standards. She searches until she finds an item that meets those standards, and at that point, she stops.

the satisficer is content with the merely excellent as opposed to the absolute best.

Maximizers are more likely to experience regret after a purchase.

people with extreme maximization scores—scores of 65 or more out of 91—had depression scores that placed them in the borderline clinical depression range.

Freedom to choose has what might be called expressive value. Choice is what enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care about.

Learned helplessness can affect future motivation to try. It can affect future ability to detect that you do have control in new situations. It can suppress the activity of the body’s immune system, thereby making helpless organisms vulnerable to a wide variety of diseases.

it is not an exaggeration to say that our most fundamental sense of well-being crucially depends on our having the ability to exert control over our environment and recognizing that we do.

Once a society’s level of per capita wealth crosses a threshold from poverty to adequate subsistence, further increases in national wealth have almost no effect on happiness.

Those who value freedom of choice and movement will tend to stay away from entangling relationships; those who value stability and loyalty will seek them.

Review some recent decisions that you’ve made, both small and large (a clothing purchase, a new kitchen appliance, a vacation destination, a retirement pension allocation, a medical procedure, a job or relationship change). Itemize the steps, time, research, and anxiety that went into making those decisions. Remind yourself how it felt to do that work. Ask yourself how much your final decision benefited from that work.

Shorten or eliminate deliberations about decisions that are unimportant to you; Use some of the time you’ve freed up to ask yourself what you really want in the areas of your life where decisions matter; And if you discover that none of the options the world presents in those areas meet your needs, start thinking about creating better options that do.

Unless you’re truly dissatisfied, stick with what you always buy. Don’t be tempted by “new and improved.” Don’t “scratch” unless there’s an “itch.” And don’t worry that if you do this, you’ll miss out on all the new things the world has to offer.

Every morning, when you wake up, or every night, when you go to bed, use the notepad to list five things that happened the day before that you’re grateful for. These objects of gratitude occasionally will be big (a job promotion, a great first date), but most of the time, they will be small (sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window, a kind word from a friend, a piece of swordfish cooked just the way you like it, an informative article in a magazine).