![]() ![]() There are hundreds of options for what kind of clothes we should purchase, the groceries we should buy, the car we should be driving, the beauty products we should be using, the restaurant we should eat at… the list goes on and on. The choice of what milk to buy is but one example of the ways in which we have become privy to an abundance of choices. In his paper “Doing Better but Feeling Worse” that came out in the same year as his book, Schwartz and co-author Andrew Ward claimed that “unconstrained freedom leads to paralysis.” (1) 5Īs we make social, scientific and technological advances, we find ourselves with more options than were available to previous generations. While freedom is important, Schwartz explains that there is a fine line between having the freedom to choose what you want and being paralyzed in the face of too many options. ![]() He found that instead of increasing decision satisfaction, having too many options made people less likely to be satisfied that they had made the best decision. However, Schwartz found that having this unparalleled plethora of choice in the modern world was actually causing people to be less happy with their decisions. Businesses and corporations often also follow this ideology, believing that more choices will lead to greater customer utility. This logic is easy to follow: instead of being forced to choose between one or two different options, people have the freedom to choose between an almost unlimited number of options. ![]() This freedom is often associated with choice, with a belief that greater choice is equated to greater freedom. One of the central tenets of western societies, especially America, is freedom. He identified that the range of choices that we have available to us these days is far greater than people had in the past however, consumer satisfaction has not increased as much as traditional economics theories might expect. Schwartz, who has long studied the ways in which economics and psychology intersect, became interested in seeing the way that choices were affecting the happiness of citizens in Western societies. The paradox of choice was popularized by American psychologist Barry Schwartz when he published his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, in 2004. Instead of increasing our freedom to have what we want, the paradox of choice suggests that having too many choices actually limits our freedom. When the number of choices increases, so does the difficulty of knowing what is best. If we only had to choose between 1% and 2% milk, it is easier to know which option we prefer, since we can easily weigh the pros and cons. The paradox of choice stipulates that while we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having an abundance of options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice. This phenomenon is known as the paradox of choice and it is becoming a concern in the modern world, where more and more options are becoming easily available to us. There are so many choices that you are overwhelmed. ![]() Almost dumbfounded, you stand in front of the aisle and have no idea what milk to pick. These days, not only do you have to make a decision on the percentage of fat you want (1%, 2%, skim, etc.), but also what source you want your milk to be coming from: cows, almonds, soybeans, oats…the list goes on. When you get to the dairy aisle you see that there are dozens of options. Imagine that you need milk, so you go to the grocery store to pick some up. ![]()
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