The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

by Barry Schwartz

As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive.

But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.

The avalanche of electronic information we now face is such that in order to solve the problem of choosing from among 200 brands of cereal or 5,000 mutual funds, we must first solve the problem of choosing from 10,000 web sites offering to make us informed consumers.

Finally, a chooser is thoughtful enough to conclude that perhaps none of the available alternatives are satisfactory, and that if he or she wants the right alternative, he or she may have to create it.

What looks attractive in prospect doesn’t always look so good in practice.

So by using rules, presumptions, standards, and routines to constrain ourselves and limit the decisions we face, we can make life more manageable, which gives us more time to devote ourselves to other people and to the decisions that we can’t or don’t want to avoid. While each second-order decision has a price—each involves passing up opportunities for something better—we could not get through a day without them.

Even decisions as trivial as renting a video become important if we believe that these decisions are revealing something significant about ourselves.

“What happens when you have too many options is that you are responsible for what happens to you.”

Comfort is nice enough, but people want pleasure. And comfort isn’t pleasure.