Do too many choices make us feel worse?

As a follow up to Gladwell’s talk, I watched Barry Schwartz's TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice (start watching at about 8:00). It’s an interesting comparison to Gladwell’s talk because Schwartz discusses the negative consequences of having too many choices. He says the first effect of it is that we experience a sense of paralysis- not knowing what to decide upon. Secondly, and what I find most interesting, is that because we are faced with so many choices (for example- 46 styles of tomato sauce- chunky, zesty, etc.) we end up less satisfied with our resulting choice than if we had had fewer options. This is because it’s easy to imagine that we could have made a different and better choice and these imagined alternatives induce us to regret the decision we made. This regret subtracts from our satisfaction even if our decision was a good one.

Part of the reason we feel worse with our decisions when we have so many things to choose from is because our expectations of how something should be go up with so many options. Schwartz tells a story of when he went jeans shopping and had to decide between hundreds of different styles, cuts, washes, thicknesses, materials, etc. He ended up picking jeans that were definitely more comfortable than he says jeans used to be without all the choices, but nevertheless, he was less satisfied than he used to be. He said he “did better but felt worse.” I like his explanation for this. He says that because there are so many options, we become responsible for the outcome, not the jean maker or the world around us. When you don’t feel completely satisfied, you think to yourself, “I could have done better.” There is no excuse for failure and we blame ourselves. Schwartz connects this to the boom in clinical depression over the last couple decades. We may be doing better with all these choices, but we feel worse.

Schwartz argues that the more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all that is disappointing about the choice you made. From an economist’s perspective, this is like opportunity cost: how much we value things depends on what we compare them to. It’s easy to see attractive features of things we reject and this makes us less satisfied with alternative we choose. At a more general level, a common belief is that income redistribution only benefits the poor. Schwartz continues to argue, however, that reducing choices is a pareto improving move. What enables choice is material affluence. Therefore if choices are reduced, and income is redistributed, everyone will be better off, because as we’ve learned, too much choice can make us feel worse even if we’re doing better.

I find Schwartz’s discussion very pertinent for the consumer. While we may have a taste for variety, it is not necessarily in our best interest to be bombarded with so many choices. Some choice is better than none but we've passed the point where so many options improve our welfare. As Schwartz puts it, “everyone needs a fishbowl.”