The Paradox of Choice

Author: Barry Schwartz

When We Choose

Let’s Go Shopping

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In one condition of the study, 6 varieties of the jam were available for tasting. In another, 24 varieties were available. In either case, the entire set of 24 varieties was available for purchase. The large array of jams attracted more people to the table than the small array, though in both cases people tasted about the same number of jams on average. When it came to buying, however, a huge difference became evident. Thirty percent of the people exposed to the small array of jams actually bought a jar; only 3 percent of those exposed to the large array of jams did so. (9.04762%)

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. 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, and don’t buy the product. (9.52381%)

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Second, we have a tendency to look around at what others are doing and use them as a standard of comparison. (9.52381%)

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First, an industry of marketers and advertisers makes products difficult or impossible to ignore. (9.52381%)

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the puzzle we began with remains: why can’t people just ignore many or some of the options, and treat a 30-option array as if it were a 6-option array? (9.52381%)

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Also, a 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. (9.52381%)

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And our culture sanctifies freedom of choice so profoundly that the benefits of infinite options seem self-evident. (10.00000%)

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Third, we may suffer from what economist Fred Hirsch referred to as the “tyranny of small decisions.” We say to ourselves, “Let’s go to one more store” or “Let’s look at one more catalog,” and not “Let’s go to all the stores” or “let’s look at all the catalogs.” (10.00000%)

New Choices

How We Choose

Deciding and Choosing

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knowing what we want means, in essence, being able to anticipate accurately how one choice or another will make us feel, and that is no simple task. (19.04760%)

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Most good decisions will involve these steps: Figure out your goal or goals. Evaluate the importance of each goal. Array the options. Evaluate how likely each of the options is to meet your goals. Pick the winning option. Later use the consequences of your choice to modify your goals, the importance you assign them, and the way you evaluate future possibilities. (19.04760%)

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As the number of options increases, the effort required to make a good decision escalates as well, (19.04760%)

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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. (19.04762%)

• Comments: This is true! Every time you choose options you have to imagine how it would be to experience it OR recall a past experience. This process is effortful.

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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. (19.52381%)

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Those who were choosing for three weeks had to predict what they would feel like eating two or three weeks from the moment of choice. And they got the prediction wrong, no doubt thinking that their low enthusiasm for pretzels after having just eaten a bag was how they would feel about pretzels a week later. (20.00000%)

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So it seems that 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. (20.47619%)

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Once we figure out what we want, we can use various resources to help evaluate the options. But we need to know that the information is reliable, and we need to have enough time to get through all the information that’s available. (20.95238%)

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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. (21.42857%)

• Comments: So now deciding what to use to help you make your decision is an entire choice all on its own!