The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

by Barry Schwartz

Americans go to shopping centers about once a week, more often than they go to houses of worship,

When should you start looking for a new job? The answer seems to be that you start looking the day you begin your current job.

People can never relax and enjoy what they have already achieved. At all times, they have to stay alert for the next big chance.

The average American sees three thousand ads a day. As advertising professor James Twitchell puts it, “Ads are what we know about the world around us.”

We may need food, but we don’t need Chilean sea bass.

But if money doesn’t do it for people, what does? What seems to be the most important factor in providing happiness is close social relations. People who are married, who have good friends, and who are close to their families are happier than those who are not.

Time spent dealing with choice is time taken away from being a good friend, a good spouse, a good parent, and a good congregant.

Thinking about opportunity costs may not change the decision you make, but it will give you a more realistic assessment of the full implications of that decision.

Thinking about the world as it isn’t, but might be or might have been, is called counterfactual thinking.

Olympic silver medalist who imagines tripping, falling, and not finishing the race at all is engaging in downward counterfactual thinking, and doing so should enhance her feelings about winning the silver. It’s only the upward counterfactual—imagining winning the gold—that will diminish her sense of achievement.

This ubiquitous feature of human psychology is a process known as adaptation. Simply put, we get used to things, and then we start to take them for granted.

Happiness isn’t everything. Subjective experience is not the only reason we have for existing.

One way of achieving this goal is by keeping wonderful experiences rare. No matter what you can afford, save great wine for special occasions. No matter what you can afford, make that perfectly cut, elegantly styled, silk blouse a special treat. This may seem like an exercise in self-denial, but I don’t think it is. On the contrary, it’s a way to make sure that you can continue to experience pleasure. What’s the point of great meals, great wines, and great blouses if they don’t make you feel great?

Choice within constraints, freedom within limits, is what enables the little fish to imagine a host of marvelous possibilities.