The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

by Barry Schwartz

The way that the meal or the music or the movie makes you feel in the moment—either good or bad—could be called experienced utility. But before you actually have the experience, you have to choose it. You have to pick a restaurant, a CD, or a movie, and you make these choices based upon how you expect the experiences to make you feel. So choices are based upon expected utility. And once you have had experience with particular restaurants, CDs, or movies, future choices will be based upon what you remember about these past experiences, in other words, on their remembered utility. To say that we know what we want, therefore, means that these three utilities align, with expected utility being matched by experienced utility, and experienced utility faithfully reflected in remembered utility. The trouble is, though, that these three utilities rarely line up so nicely.