Barry Schwartz on Why Too Much Choice is Bad for Us
Thanks to Olenka who pointed me to this great talk by Barry Schwartz on why too much choice is bad for us.
Too many choices cause:
- Paralysis rather than liberation - people prefer to make no decision rather than make a complicated choice.
- Less satisfaction with decisions as people have greater reason to regret the decisions they have made.
- Unrealistic expectations.
- Self-blame - when experiences are not perfect, people blame themselves.
Schwartz also argues that in modern affluent societies, too much choice may be a significant contributor to depression. He is the author of 'The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
ยป Also check out Dan Gilbert's talk on why we are poor at predicting our future happiness.
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Wonderful perspective on why change is not always good. With so many choices to make, no wonder people are unable to make the choices they need to meet their needs. How do compulsive people ever make decisions when there are so many "salad dressings", internet data, and communication devices in their lives? Thanks for the video presentation, it was enriching!
You're welcome Garth, although to be honest Barry did most of the work!
Actually, I was watching a contrasting presentation by Malcolm Gladwell (of 'Blink' and 'Tipping Point' fame) and he was talking about how the increase an varieties of tomato sauce increased human happiness.
Well actually we don't know that it increased happiness, just that it markedly increased sales of one particular brand of tomato sauce.
It seems, then, in many situations companies have a financial incentive to increase choice (leads to more sales) despite the fact that the end result may be lower overall consumer satisfaction with what they have bought.
I think the interface between psychology and economics has a lot to teach us about the more dangerous processes in society.
I'm afraid that all those things Schwartz talked about are perfectly known by goverments and big companies. I would like to belive they do this unconsciously (I'm afraid they don't).
However, I consider that the deepest problem, more than a lot of options to choice, is a bad education in how to face those possibilities.
Above all this, great talk and better blog!
(Excuse my writting style ^^'..)
I think most encouraging was the point Schwartz made at the his talk; that though we think a redistribution of income from rich-nations to poor-nations will always be at our expense, in truth, it's a win-win situation. We live in such material affluence that the abundance of choice is no longer enriching. To lower our material affluence / choices will serve better the interest of the global community. To think that we have at least a dozen brands of mineral water on our supermarket shelves while large populations of the world do not even have access to clean drinking water.
This was fascinating and very relevant, I'm going to nab this for the MindFields College blog!
Never trust a man who gives a lecture in shorts and trainers...
Ok, so I just watched him all the way through. I felt like he could have said what he wanted to say in about 2 minutes and had about half the material for a pretty good stand-up routine.
I think the proliferation of choice drives the process of innovation and ultimately improvement through a sort of consumerist darwinism and isn't to be sniffed at. Yes, it's confusing but ultimately the grass is always greener...
"the grass is always greener" where? On the other side of the fence - Schwartz's point exactly.
The problem of too much choice is a well known factor in real estate marketing.
When people have too many possible apartments to choose from or too many homes to view, they tend to waffle. As a former leasing professional, I saw this situtation all the time:
A leasing agent would show a prospective tenant two apartments. The tenant would either say definately yes or definately no before leaving the property OR the prospective tenant would go home, think it over and call back having decided upon one or the other apartment.
If a tenant was shown more than three possible apartments, he or she would become hesitant and almost always ask to see yet MORE apartments. Often, the tenant who saw more than three apartments would end up leasing someplace else.
I once calculated the closing ratios of my leasing staff to convince them NOT to show more than three apartments (even if more were available). Showing two apartments my five leasing agents averaged a 32% closing ratio.
Showing more than three apartments they averaged a closing ratio of 16% and the time between the intial visit and the close was much longer. And the tenants had to be reshown several times. They never took my advice.
I keep hearing that Devo song, "Freedom of Choice" in my head!
Anon, very interesting. Amazing that your agents still didn't take any notice after they were shown the stats. Well, not that amazing - they are human after all!