The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

by Barry Schwartz

embraced certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice,

seeking what was “good enough” instead of seeking the best

lowered our expectations about the results of decisions.

the decisions we made were nonreversible.

paid less attention to what others around...

study speculated about several explanations for these results. A large array of options may discourage consumers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making a decision. So consumers decide not to decide,

large array of options may diminish the attractiveness of what people actually choose, the reason being that thinking about the attractions of some of the unchosen options detracts from the pleasure derived from the chosen one.

This is a very good thing. The burden of having every activity be a matter of deliberate and conscious choice would be too much for any of us to bear.

we would opt for choice almost every time. But it is the cumulative effect of these added choices that I think is causing substantial distress.

losses have more than twice the psychological impact as equivalent gains.

the more affluent a society becomes, and the more basic material needs are met, the more people care about goods that are inherently scarce.

We must decide, individually, when choice really matters and focus our energies there, even if it means letting many other opportunities pass us by. The choice of when to be a chooser may be the most important choice we have to make.

WAY OF EASING THE BURDEN THAT FREEDOM OF CHOICE IMPOSES IS to make decisions about when to make decisions. These are what Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit call second-order decisions.

whenever we are forced to make decisions involving trade-offs, we will feel less good about the option we choose than we would have if the alternatives hadn’t been there.

AS THE NUMBER OF OPTIONS UNDER CONSIDERATION goes up and the attractive features associated with the rejected alternatives accumulate, the satisfaction derived from the chosen alternative will go down.

they relate to ideas students are discussing in another course. But the potential attractiveness of each will subtract from the attractiveness of all of the others. The net result, after the subtractions, is that none of the topics will be attractive enough to overcome inertia

The omission bias undergoes a reversal with respect to decisions made in the more distant past. When asked about what they regret most in the last six months, people tend to identify actions that didn’t meet expectations. But when asked about what they regret most when they look back on their lives as a whole, people tend to identify failures to act.

downward counterfactual thinking may induce us to be grateful for how well we did this time.

what “should” matter are the prospects for future performance—of the business or of the player. But what also seems to matter is the level of previous investment.

sunk-cost effects are much bigger when a person bears responsibility for the initial decision

two of the factors affecting regret are Personal responsibility for the result How easily an individual can imagine a counterfactual, better alternative The availability of choice obviously exacerbates both of these factors.

a process known as adaptation. Simply put, we get used to things, and then we start to take them for granted.

hedonic adaptation, or adaptation to pleasure.

predictors substantially overestimated how good a positive decision would make them feel and how bad a negative decision would make them feel in the long run.

By causing us to focus on how much better our lives are than they could have been, or were before, the disappointment that adaptation brings in its wake can be blunted.

As our material and social circumstances improve, our standards of comparison go up.

The hedonic zero point keeps rising, and expectations and aspirations rise with it.

The blessing of modest expectations is that they leave room for many experiences to be a pleasant surprise, a hedonic plus.

way to be happy—the way to succeed in the quest for status—is to find the right pond and stay in it.

No matter how many resources a person has, if everyone else has at least as much, his chances of enjoying these positional goods are slim. Sometimes these kinds of goods are positional simply because the supply can’t be increased. Not everyone can have a van Gogh hanging in his living room. At other times, the problem is that as more consumers gain access to these goods, their value decreases due to overcrowding.

“Optimists” explain successes with chronic, global, and personal causes and failures with transient, specific, and universal ones. “Pessimists” do the reverse.

Choosers have the time to modify their goals; pickers do not. Choosers have the time to avoid following the herd; pickers do not.

Shorten or eliminate deliberations about decisions that are unimportant to you;

When we imagine better alternatives, the one we chose can seem worse. When we imagine worse alternatives, the one we chose can seem better. We can vastly improve our subjective experience by consciously striving to be grateful more often for what is good about a choice or an experience, and to be disappointed less by what is bad about it.

Learning to be satisfied as pleasures turn into mere comforts will ease disappointment with adaptation when it occurs.

In the short run, thinking about these second-order decisions—decisions about when in life we will deliberate and when we will follow predetermined paths—adds a layer of complexity to life. But in the long run, many of the daily hassles will vanish,