The Paradox Of Choice (Why More Is Less) by Barry Schwartz – Book Summary

The Paradox Of Choice is a comparison of life with choices and without choices.

Be it something as trivial as buying a packet of cookies to something as important as choosing a grad school; we have plenty of choices. In this book, Barry Schwartz examines how more choices are not always better, and how more might be less.

This book offers insights into:

1. In terms of choices, more isn’t always better.
2. Avoid choosing the best always, since it puts too much stress on us.
3. Sometimes it is better to look for what is good enough, rather than choosing the best.
4. We should voluntarily restrict our choices to reduce stress and increase overall happiness and satisfaction.

 

1- The More The Choices The Higher The Disappointment And Dissatisfaction

When we go to the market, we see so many choices given to us; thousands of brands, products, varieties, etc. This is a mere representation of the abundance of choices that we have in modern times. More alternatives may mean more freedom; however, they can also mean more dissatisfaction. Barry Schwartz argues that having so many choices extracts a psychological price that makes us feel dissatisfied.

Increased choices have affected our decision-making. They have forced us to spend time evaluating our choices. And eliminating a large number of them to come to a final decision. This means spending too much time making an even relatively trivial decision, with no guarantee that the decisions we make are perfect. This ultimately results in remorse, since we fear that some alternatives we eliminated, might have been better than the ones we did not.

Several surveys and studies have confirmed that people with fewer choices are more satisfied. As compared with those with a higher number of choices.

 

2- There Are Plenty Of Choices In Every Selection In Our Life

As humans, our instincts have always been to reduce the time it takes to get the necessities of life. For example, in earlier times, each person needed to obtain each of his basic needs. However, this is no longer the case. Most of us specialize in one job and obtain our necessities by buying goods from stores and shops. This is because it is far quicker and much less hassling than trying to produce these goods on our own.

The malls, shopping complexes, and mega-stores which we built for our own convenience, now force us to spend an increasing amount of time and energy in choosing the goods to buy.

 

What Led To Increased Choices

Earlier, utility companies had a monopoly over their respective regions, giving no real choice to residents. Now, people can choose from several companies offering the same kind of services. The same is true for phone and internet service providers. This increase in choices, in theory, should be good for consumers. It is actually not, since most consumers do not go through the hassle of comparing all the choices and choosing the best one for them. Instead, they often stick with the one they already have, and thus, can be fooled into paying more.

What is true of utilities and phone service providers is true of most other services, including health insurance, medical care, banking, retirement plans, employment, and even personal relations. In fact, we have to make more choices in our lives than ever before. Between choosing to choose or not to choose, most of us would like to choose. However, the cumulative effect of all these choices is that our lives have been more stressful than ever.

Choosing from different colleges to choosing the exact courses one wants to take, even education has so many choices.

 

3- Making A Choice Is A Process

Choosing well is a step-by-step process that involves figuring out what we want, evaluating all available options, examining how the options would fulfill our needs, and finally choosing the right option. Thus, we can see that even if we have a few options, the process of choosing is not fast and simple; it takes time. If we have lots of options, naturally the time and energy to go through all the steps in choosing will be huge.

While choosing something, one needs information to make the right choice. Gathering information as well as processing it takes both time and energy. Usually, if the number of choices is limited, the time and energy taken is much lesser and is well rewarded since we make the right choice.

In a world filled with so many choices and options, the energy required to choose is huge. This means that most of us do not actually go through the entire process of choosing. Instead of becoming choosers, we become pickers. We randomly choose what we think is good and hope for the best. In some cases, the effect of not choosing well is trivial; in other cases, it might have far-reaching consequences.

Thus, what is important for us is to choose whether to choose or not, i.e., see whether we should devote our resources towards making a well-informed and well-thought choice or not. This will depend on how important the decision is going to be, and what the consequences of that decision will be.

 

4- Strategy To Choose Best vs Strategy To Choose Good Enough

Depending on how much effort people put into making choices, they could broadly be put on a spectrum with two extreme ends: Maximisers and Satisficers.

A maximizer is someone who puts a great deal of effort into the process of choosing to get the very best. For maximizers, anything less than the best won’t do, and they will get very disappointed if they make the wrong choice. These are the kind of people who are the most affected by the explosion of options and choices in the modern world since they have to put a considerable amount of time and energy into making choices and face great stress because of it.

On the other end of the spectrum are satisficers. They are the ones who will make do with what’s good enough. They have their own standards, and they will choose the first thing which will satisfy all those standards.

Most people fall somewhere between these two extremes and are maximizers as well as satisficers. While to a maximizer it will appear that the satisficer is settling for something mediocre, it is not true. The satisficer chooses something good enough for him or her without going through the stress and hassle of choosing the best.

Satisficers are happier with their choices, and with life in general. They do not ruminate over anything that could be another option.

 

5- A High Number Of Choices Does Not Offer More Happiness

Choices are crucial for our well-being; they allow us to pursue and attain the goals which we would like to attain. Being deprived of choices will mean being deprived of something which we may want but can’t get. Classical economist Adam Smith had theorized that full freedom of choice for consumers and producers would ensure the highest efficiency of production and distribution of goods and resources.

The choice does another very important thing; it makes us feel as if we are in control. Experts call this feeling of control over our lives the “psychological benefit of choices.” However, studies have shown that more and more people are beginning to feel as if they are no longer in control. This is paradoxical since our choices have become much more numerous. This can perhaps be explained by saying that people are feeling overwhelmed by so many choices and feel burdened by all these choices.

To maximize our happiness, we need to prioritize when to choose and when not to choose. These decisions are called “second-order decisions” and are critical in the modern era of endless choices.

Another thing to note is that wanting something does not mean liking it. You may want something, but that does not mean you will like it when you get it. This is true in cases of choices; one may desire more choices, but when faced with so many choices one may hate having to choose.

 

6- The Negative Trade-Off Between Choosing More & Eliminating More

Whenever we make a choice, we engage in a trade-off. For example, let us say you have to choose between two video game consoles. Both have their respective advantages and disadvantages. By choosing one, who has to let go of the advantages of the other. You are essentially trading off the advantages of one good for another.

Thus, the more choices you make, the more trade-offs you have to undergo. This has a negative psychological effect since each option you discard is a missed opportunity. Ultimately, it will lead to lower satisfaction with your final choice. This negative psychological effect might even lead to us making the wrong choices.

How can we reduce this negative effect? One of the ways is by keeping the decision “reversible,” e.g. while buying a product having an option to return it. Buyers will find it easy to choose, knowing well that their decisions now have lesser consequences. Another method is by being a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Satisficers are satisfied with what’s good enough and will think less of the missed opportunities. Maximizers will always be worried that the opportunities they missed could have been better than the ones they took. This will only reduce satisfaction and increase stress.

 

7- Wrong Choices Bring More Regret To Maximizers

Sometimes we make the wrong choices, and these are often the cause of regret later on. For example, if you buy a product and it turns out to be defective, or that you realize that you could have bought a better product for the same price, you are bound to regret your decision. We call this kind of regret “post-decision” regret (also called “buyer’s remorse”). Another kind of regret is “anticipated” regret, which happens when a better choice appears before us, making it harder to choose.

It is the maximizers who feel the most regret. It is because of this regret that they try to make the best choice possible, to avoid the regret of wrong choices. However, in the modern world of so many choices, it is easy to make wrong choices and feel much regret later on.

The regret of doing something wrong is often more than the regret of failing to do something. For example, if you invest in something but you lose your money, you will feel more regret than if you did not invest in something where you could have made a handsome gain. We call this “omission bias.”

Regret often hurts us, and we try to minimize regret. After facing regrets for decisions that we have taken, we are more likely to anticipate regret when making future decisions. This may manifest in several forms; we are likely to take the same decisions as our friends, or family members took since if the decision turned out to be a bad one we will not feel bad on account of negative comparison.

 

8- Efforts To Make A Choice Are Directly Proportional To High Expectations

As humans, we often get used to the things we have and stop valuing them so much. A new iPhone may make you happy for a short while, but as you get used to it, and with a new model launched within a space of a year, you will start regretting your decision of buying the previous model and would feel unhappy.

Another thing to note is that most people cannot accurately estimate how much satisfaction they are going to derive from something. Most people rather think they would get more satisfaction than they actually would.
In a world of so many choices, we often put a huge effort into our choices. This naturally means that we expect more from them, and when it does not happen we feel regret.

 

9- Comparison Of Things Causes Disappointment

When we judge whether a choice we took was good or not, we often look to compare it. The comparison can be from three perspectives, first with what one expected, second with what one experienced in the past, and third with others’ experiences.

We often take past experiences as benchmarks to judge present ones. According to the work of the noted psychologist Daniel Kahneman, people remember the peak pleasures or pain of their experiences and the way they ended. Thus, the memories of past experiences may not serve as a suitable objective benchmark for making a good choice in the present. The third one is “social comparison”. To make it clear, let us take the example of a test. The invigilators judge our performance in a test by how others did; if you scored a B+ but others got B- or less it will make you feel satisfied with your score. On the other hand, if others got A and A+ and you still get a B+, you will be sad.

Social comparison has largely to do with status. We want our status to shine in comparison to others. This can manifest in several ways, such as wanting to have a higher income than others in your firm or wanting to have a better car than your neighbors.

To reduce regret and disappointment, we should avoid using social comparison as a benchmark for judging our own choices.

 

10- Keep Yourself Restricted To Lesser Spectrum Of Choice

As we have seen, the benefits of the freedom to choose are overstated in the face of numerous choices. Living with lesser options is less taxing psychologically.

To be happy, along with material comforts, one also needs social relationships. No relationship can prosper if there are no ground rules to abide by. For example, people who think that marriage is irrevocable, actually get divorced much less and live a happier life than people who think of marriage as something which one can walk out of at any time.

The voluntary constraints which one places on oneself can affect the way one thinks and can make one feel happier. Being a part of a community requires letting go of certain notions of absolute freedom and being flexible and pliant in certain aspects of one’s life. However, such flexibility and pliancy, which results in stronger bonds among the people in a community, have been shown to reduce depression and unhappiness.

 

Conclusion Of The Paradox Of Choice

Although choices are good for us and more choices could mean us having better lives, having too many choices could be a bad thing. The author brings up the various causes of regret caused by choices, such as trade-offs, adapting to choices, and disappointments caused by comparison.

In the modern world, there are too many choices (in all fields such as buying products, getting an education or a job, etc.) and these choices reduce our satisfaction and increase stress and unhappiness. Voluntary constraints can help in reducing our choices, and help us in leading more fulfilling lives.