Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-analytic Review of Choice Overload

The Paradox of Choice – Why More is Less

Author	Barry Schwartz
Cover creative person	David Loftier & Ralph del Pozzo, High Pattern, NYC
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Psychology, Sociology
Genre	Selection, Decision making
Publisher	Harper Perennial
Publication date	2004 (hardcover) January 18, 2005 (paperback)
Media blazon	Impress (hardcover, paperback)
Pages	304
ISBN	0-06-000568-8 (hardcover) 0060005696 (paperback)
OCLC	64265862
Dewey Decimal	153.8/3
LC Class	BF611 .S38 2004

The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less is a volume written past American psychologist Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004 past Harper Perennial. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. The book analyses the behavior of dissimilar types of people (in detail, maximizers and satisficers) facing the rich option. This book demonstrates to us how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with selection encourages united states to seek that which makes the states feel worse.

Summary [edit]

"Autonomy and freedom of selection are critical to our well being, and pick is critical to liberty and autonomy. However, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't seem to be benefiting from information technology psychologically".^[i] This quote from his book summarises Schwartz's point of view with regards to having too many choices.

Publication history [edit]

The Paradox of Choice was published past Harper Perennial and was released on 2004 while the paperback version was released on 18th Jan 2005.^[2]

Schwartz's thesis [edit]

Schwartz assembles his statement from a multifariousness of fields of modern psychology that study how happiness is affected by success or failure of goal achievement.

When we cull [edit]

Schwartz compares the various choices that Americans face up in their daily lives past comparing the option of choices at a supermarket to the variety of classes at an Ivy League higher:

There are at present several books and magazines devoted to what is called the "voluntary simplicity" movement. Its core idea is that we accept too many choices, too many decisions, too picayune fourth dimension to do what is really important. ... Taking care of our ain "wants" and focusing on what we "want" to practice does non strike me as a solution to the trouble of too much option.^[three]

Schwartz maintains that it is precisely so that we can focus on our own wants that all of these choices emerged in the outset identify.

How we choose [edit]

Schwartz describes that a consumer's strategy for virtually expert decisions will involve these steps:

1. Figure out your goal or goals. The process of goal-setting and conclusion making begins with the question: "What do I want?" When faced with the option to choice a restaurant, a CD, or a picture, one makes their choice based upon how one would expect the experience to make them feel, expected utility. Once they have experienced that particular restaurant, CD or movie, their choice volition exist based upon a remembered utility. To say that you know what you want, therefore, means that these utilities marshal. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues have shown that what we think about the pleasurable quality of our by experiences is almost entirely determined by two things: how the experiences felt when they were at their peak (all-time or worst), and how they felt when they concluded.
2. Evaluate the importance of each goal. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have researched how people brand decisions and found a variety of rules of thumb that often lead us astray. Most people give substantial weight to anecdotal evidence, perhaps and so much and so that it cancels out expert evidence. The researchers chosen it the availability heuristic describing how nosotros assume that the more available some slice of information is to memory, the more frequently we must take encountered it in the past. Salience will influence the weight we requite any particular slice of information.
3. Assortment the options. Kahneman and Tversky found that personal "psychological accounts" will produce the effect of framing the selection and determining what options are considered as subjects to factor. For example, an evening at a concert could be just one entry in a much larger account, of say a "coming together a potential mate" account. Or it could be office of a more general business relationship such as "ways to spend a Fri night". But how much an evening at a concert is worth will depend on which account it is a office of.
4. Evaluate how likely each of the options is to meet your goals. People frequently talk about how "artistic accountants can brand a corporate balance sheet look as good or bad as they want it to look." In many means Schwartz views nearly people as artistic accountants when it comes to keeping their own psychological balance sheet.
5. Selection the winning option. Schwartz argues that options are already attached to choices being considered. When the options are non already attached, they are not part of the endowment and choosing them is perceived as a gain. Economist Richard Thaler provides a helpful term sunk costs.
6. Modify goals. Schwartz points out that later, 1 uses the consequences of their choice to modify their goals, the importance assigned to them, and the style hereafter possibilities are evaluated.^[3]

Schwartz relates the ideas of psychologist Herbert A. Simon from the 1950s to the psychological stress that near consumers face today. He notes some of import distinctions between, what Simon termed, maximizers and satisficers. A maximizer is similar to a perfectionist, someone who needs to be bodacious that their every purchase or determination was the best that could be made. The style a maximizer knows for certain is to consider all the alternatives they tin can imagine. This creates a psychologically daunting job, which can go even more than daunting every bit the number of options increases. The culling to maximizing is to be a satisficer. A satisficer has criteria and standards, but a satisficer is not worried about the possibility that in that location might exist something meliorate. Ultimately, Schwartz agrees with Simon's conclusion, that satisficing is, in fact, the maximizing strategy.^[iii]

Why we suffer [edit]

Schwartz integrates various psychological models for happiness showing how the problem of choice can be addressed by dissimilar strategies. What is important to note is that each of these strategies comes with its own bundle of psychological ^[3] complication."Liberty of choice" leads people to feel powerless and frustrated, considering choosing 'ane' among many other options means giving up the rest of the opportunities. At the same time, since people can hands change and replace the choice, the accented value of making a selection no longer exists.

• Choice and happiness. Schwartz discusses the significance of common research methods that utilize a happiness scale. He sides with the opinion of psychologists David Myers and Robert Lane, who independently conclude that the current abundance of choice oft leads to depression and feelings of loneliness. Schwartz draws particular attention to Lane's exclamation that Americans are paying for increased affluence and freedom with a substantial decrease in the quality and quantity of customs. What was once given by family, neighborhood and workplace now must exist achieved and actively cultivated on an individual basis. The social material is no longer a birthright but has become a series of deliberated and demanding choices. Schwartz also discusses happiness with specific products. For example, he cites a study past Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and Mark Lepper of Stanford University who found that when participants were faced with a smaller rather than larger array of jam, they were actually more satisfied with their tasting.

• Freedom or commitment. Schwartz connects this event to economist Albert Hirschman's research into how populations respond to unhappiness: they tin can exit the state of affairs, or they tin can protestation and voice their concerns. While gratis-market governments give citizens the right to express their displeasure by leave, as in switching brands, Schwartz maintains that social relations are different. Instead, we usually requite voice to displeasure, hoping to project influence on the situation.
• Second-order decisions. Law professor Cass Sunstein uses the term "second-society decisions" for decisions that follow a dominion. Having the subject field to alive "by the rules" eliminates countless troublesome choices in one'southward daily life. Schwartz shows that these second-order decisions can be divided into general categories of effectiveness for different situations: presumptions, standards, and cultural codes. Each of these methods are useful ways people use to parse the vast array of choices they face up.
• Missed opportunities. Schwartz finds that when people are faced with having to choose one selection out of many desirable choices, they volition begin to consider hypothetical trade-offs. Their options are evaluated in terms of missed opportunities instead of the opportunity's potential. In other words, after choosing an alternative with a plurality simply not a majority of utility, people remember the sum of the lost utility rather than that they fabricated the "utility-maximizing" choice. Schwartz maintains that one of the downsides of making merchandise-offs is it alters how nosotros feel about the decisions nosotros face up; afterwards, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from our decision. While psychologists take known for years about the harmful effects of negative emotion on decision making, Schwartz points to recent evidence showing how positive emotion has the opposite effect: in general, subjects are inclined to consider more than possibilities when they are feeling happy.^[iii]

Mixed findings [edit]

Attempts to duplicate the paradox of choice in other studies have had mixed success. A meta-assay incorporating enquiry from 50 independent studies found no meaningful connection betwixt pick and anxiety, but speculated that the variance in the studies left open the possibility that option overload could be tied to sure highly specific and as yet poorly understood pre-conditions.^{[iv] [five]}

A new meta-analysis, conducted in 2015 and incorporating 99 studies, was able to isolate when reducing choices for your customers is most likely to boost sales. The study identified four key factors—choice ready complication, determination task difficulty, preference uncertainty, and conclusion goal—that moderate the impact of assortment size on pick overload. It also documented that when moderating variables are taken into account the overall upshot of assortment size on choice overload is significant—a finding counter to the data reported by prior meta-analytic enquiry.^[6]

Research presented in an commodity by Alexander Chernev demonstrates that, contrary to the common wisdom that more than option is always improve, selections made from large assortments tin can lead to weaker preferences. Building on the extant literature, this research identifies platonic point availability every bit a key factor that determines when large assortments will strengthen consumer preferences and when large assortments volition weaken preferences. Information technology as well states that the ideal bespeak availability is also a key factor in consumer choices.^[7]

See also [edit]

• Assay paralysis
• Buridan's donkey
• Collaborative filtering
• Choice theory
• Consumer psychology
• Consumerism
• Cultural development
• Decision theory
• Decision making
• Hick's police
• Mass marketing
• Sheena Iyengar
• Data overload
• Overchoice
• Paradox of plenty
• Shopping
• Social psychology
• Tyranny of small decisions

References [edit]

1. ^ Schwartz, Barry (2004). "five". The Paradox of Choice. New York, Us: Harper Perennial. ISBN0-06-000568-8.
2. ^ "The Paradox of Choice". www.goodreads.com . Retrieved 2021-04-27 .
3. ^ ^{a b c d due east} Schwartz, Barry (2004). The Paradox Of Pick. New York, United States: Harper Perennial. ISBN0-06-000568-eight.
4. ^ Scheibehenne, Benjamin; Greifeneder, R.; Todd, P. 1000. (2010). "Tin can There Ever exist As well Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload" (PDF). Journal of Consumer Research. 37 (3): 409–425. doi:10.1086/651235. Retrieved Apr ix, 2012.
5. ^ Thompson, Derek (August nineteen, 2013). "More than Is More: Why the Paradox of Option Might Be a Myth". The Atlantic.
6. ^ Chernev, Alexander; Böckenholt, U.; Goodman, J.K. (2015). "Selection overload: A conceptual review and meta-assay". Journal of Consumer Psychology. 25 (ii): 333–358. doi:x.1016/j.jcps.2014.08.002.
7. ^ Chernev, Alexander (September 2003). "When More Is Less and Less Is More than: The Role of Platonic Point Availability and Assortment in Consumer Pick". Journal of Consumer Inquiry. thirty (ii): 170–183. doi:10.1086/376808. ISSN 0093-5301.

External links [edit]

• TED Talk by Barry Schwartz on The Paradox of Choice
• The Paradox of Choice at books.google.com
• Google TechTalk: The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz (2006)
• The Return of Old-Fashioned Paternalism – Will limiting our choices salve u.s. from ourselves?, by Steve Chapman | August 7, 2008.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

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