Lane writes that we are paying for increased affluence and increased freedom with a substantial decrease in the quality and quantity of social relations. We earn more and spend more, but we spend less time with others. More than a quarter of Americans report being lonely, and loneliness seems to come not from being alone, but from lack of intimacy. We spend less time visiting with neighbors. We spend less time visiting with our parents, and much less time visiting with other relatives. And once again, this phenomenon adds to our burden of choice. As Lane writes: “What was once given by neighborhood and work now must be achieved; people have had to make their own friends…and actively cultivate their own family connections.” In other words, our social fabric is no longer a birthright but has become a series of deliberate and demanding choices.
The Time Problem
BEING SOCIALLY CONNECTED TAKES TIME. FIRST, IT TAKES TIME TO form close connections. To form a real friendship with someone, or to develop a romantic attachment, we have to get to know the other person quite deeply. Only in Hollywood do such attachments come instantly and effortlessly. And close attachment, not acquaintanceship, is what people most want and need. Second, when we establish these deep connections, we have to devote time to maintaining them. When family, friends, fellow congregants need us, we have to be there. When disagreements or conflicts arise, we have to stay in the game and work them out. And the needs of friends and family don’t arise on a convenient schedule, to be penciled into our day planner or Palm Pilot. They come when they come, and we have to be ready to respond.
Who has this kind of time? Who has the flexibility and breathing room in life’s regularly scheduled activities to be there when needed without paying a heavy price in stress and distraction? Not me. Time is the ultimate scarce resource, and for some reason, even as one “time-saving” bit of technology after another comes our way, the burdens on our time seem to increase. Again, it is my contention that a major contributor to this time burden is the vastly greater number of choices we find ourselves preparing for, making, reevaluating, and perhaps regretting. Should you book a table at your favorite Italian place or that new bistro? Should you rent the cottage on the lake or take the plunge and go to Tuscany? Time to refinance again? Stick with your Internet provider or go with a new direct service line? Move some stocks? Change your health insurance? Get a better rate on your credit card? Try that new herbal remedy? Time spent dealing with choice is time taken away from being a good friend, a good spouse, a good parent, and a good congregant.
Freedom or Commitment
ESTABLISHING AND MAINTAINING MEANINGFUL SOCIAL RELATIONS requires a willingness to be bound or constrained by them, even when dissatisfied. Once people make commitments to others, options close. Economist and historian Albert Hirschman, in his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, suggested that people have two general classes of responses available when they are unhappy. They can exit the situation, or they can protest and give voice to their concerns. In the marketplace, exit is the characteristic response to dissatisfaction. If a restaurant no longer pleases us, we go to another. If our once favorite breakfast cereal gets too expensive, we switch to a different brand. If our favorite vacation spot gets too crowded, we find a new one. One of the principal virtues of free-market choice is that it gives people the opportunity to express their displeasure by exit.
Social relations are different. We don’t dismiss lovers, friends, or communities the way we dismiss restaurants, cereals, or vacation spots. Treating people in this way is unseemly at best and reprehensible at worst. Instead, we usually give voice to our displeasure, hoping to influence our lover, friend, or community. And even when these efforts fail, we feel bound to keep trying. Exit, or abandonment, is the response of last resort.
Most people find it extremely challenging to balance the conflicting impulses of freedom of choice on the one hand and loyalty and commitment on the other. Each person is expected to figure out this balance individually. Those who value freedom of choice and movement will tend to stay away from entangling relationships; those who value stability and loyalty will seek them. Many will cobble together some mixture of these two modes of social engagement. If we fail in establishing exactly the kinds of social relations we want, we will feel that we have only ourselves to blame. And many times we will fail.
Social institutions could ease the burden on individuals by establishing constraints that, while open to transformation, could not be violated willy-nilly by each person as he chooses. With clearer “rules of the game” for us to live by—constraints that specify how much of life each of us should devote to ourselves and what our obligations to family, friends, and community should be—much of the onus for making these decisions would be lifted.
But the price of accepting constraints imposed by social institutions is a restriction on individual freedom. Is it a price worth paying? A society that allows us to answer this question individually has already given us an answer, for by giving people the choice, it has opted for freedom. And a society that does not allow us to answer this question individually has also given an answer, opting for constraints. But if unrestricted freedom can impede the individual’s pursuit of what he or she values most, then it may be that some restrictions make everyone better off. And if “constraint” sometimes affords a kind of liberation while “freedom” affords a kind of enslavement, then people would be wise to seek out some measure of appropriate constraint.
Second-Order Decisions
AWAY OF EASING THE BURDEN THAT FREEDOM OF CHOICE IMPOSES IS to make decisions about when to make decisions. These are what Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit call second-order decisions. One kind of second-order decision is the decision to follow a rule. If buckling your seat belt is a rule, you will always buckle up, and the issue of whether it’s worth the trouble for a one-mile trip to the market just won’t arise. If you adopt the rule that you will never cheat on your partner, you will eliminate countless painful and tempting decisions that might confront you later on. Having the discipline to live by the rules you make for yourself is, of course, another matter, but one thing’s for sure: following rules eliminates troublesome choices in your daily life, each time you get into a car or each time you go to a cocktail party.
Presumptions are less stringent than rules. Presumptions are like the default settings on computer applications. When I set my word processor to use “Times 12” as the default font, I don’t have to think about it. When, once in a while, I’m doing something special, such as preparing an overhead to be projected in a large auditorium, I can deviate from the default. But 99.9 percent of the time, my decision is made for me.
Standards are even less rigorous than rules or presumptions. When we establish a standard, we are essentially dividing the world of options into two categories: options that meet the standard and options that don’t. Then, when we have to make a choice, we need only investigate the options within category number one. As we saw in the last chapter, it’s a lot easier to decide whether something is good enough (to satisfice) than it is to decide whether something is the best (to maximize). This is especially true if we combine standards with routines, or habits. Deciding that once we find something that meets our standards we’ll stick with it essentially takes away that area of decision making. Friendships often sustain themselves on a combination of standards and routines. We are drawn to people who meet our standards (of intelligence, kindness, character, loyalty, wit), and then we stick with them. We don’t make a choice, every day, about whether to maintain the friendship; we just do. We don’t ask ourselves whether we would get more out of a friendship with Mary than we do out of our friendship with Jane. There are countless “Marys” out there, and if we did ask ourselves this kind of question, we’d be continually choosing whether to maintain our friendships.
So by using rules, presumptions, standards, and routines to constrain ourselves and limit the decisions we face, we can make life more manageable, which gives us more time to devote ourselves to other peop
le and to the decisions that we can’t or don’t want to avoid. While each second-order decision has a price—each involves passing up opportunities for something better—we could not get through a day without them.
At the turn of the twentieth century, biologist Jacob von Uexkull, observing how evolution shaped organisms so that their perceptual and behavioral abilities were precisely attuned to their survival, remarked that “security is more important than wealth.” In other words, a squirrel in the wild doesn’t have the “wealth” of experience and of choice that people do when they decide to take a walk in the forest. What the squirrel does have is the “security” that it will notice what matters most and know how to do what it needs to do to survive, because biology supplies the needed constraints on choice. It helps organisms recognize food, mates, predators, and other dangers, and it supplies them with a small set of activities appropriate for obtaining what they truly need. For people, such constraints have to come from culture. Some cultures have constraints in oppressive abundance, while our consumer culture has strived for decades to jettison as many constraints as possible. As I have argued from the outset, oppression can exist at either extreme of the continuum.
Wanting and Liking
GIVEN THE HIGH VALUE WE PLACE ON AUTONOMY AND FREEDOM OF choice, you would think that having it would make us happier. Usually, the things we want are the things we like, the things that give us pleasure.
But powerful evidence has recently appeared that “wanting” and “liking” are served by fundamentally different brain systems—systems that often do, but certainly need not, work together. Drug addicts desperately “want” their drugs (such is the nature of addiction), even after they reach a point in their addiction where ingesting the drugs provides very little pleasure. And stimulation of certain areas of the brain can get rats to “want” food, though they show no evidence that they “enjoy” it even as they eat it. So wanting and liking can, under some circumstances, be dissociated, just as there is often a disconnect between our anticipated preferences and the options we actually choose.
Remember that 65 percent of people who didn’t have cancer said that if they got it, they would prefer to choose their treatment. Of those who actually had cancer, 88 percent said they would prefer not to choose. Apparently we always think we want choice, but when we actually get it, we may not like it. Meanwhile, the need to chose in ever more aspects of life causes us more distress than we realize.
CHAPTER SIX
Missed Opportunities
IT’S FEBRUARY. IT’S FREEZING COLD. THE STREETS ARE LINED WITH soot-covered snow. As Angela commutes to and from work in the dark, what gets her through the end of another long winter is thinking about next summer’s vacation.
She is considering two very different possibilities: touring in northern California or a week at a beach house on Cape Cod. How does she decide what to do? She might begin by considering what matters to her most when she goes on vacation. She appreciates the splendor of nature, so of course her destination has to be beautiful. She loves to spend time outdoors, but she hates heat and humidity, so the weather has to be just right. She loves long stretches of isolated coastline, but she also likes good food and a bustling nightlife, people-watching and window-shopping. Then again, she hates crowds. She likes to be physically active, but, sometimes she also likes to spend an afternoon just lounging in a comfortable chair and reading.
So now what? Two tasks remain. Angela has to assess the importance of these various features of vacation destinations. For example, is good weather more important than bustling nightlife? Then, she has to see how northern California and Cape Cod stack up. If one of these options is better than the other in every respect that Angela cares about, her decision will be easy. But more likely, she’ll discover that each option has strengths that the other one lacks, so she’ll end up having to make trade-offs. Nonetheless, if she lists the things that matter to her, determines how much they matter, and evaluates how each possibility measures up, Angela will be able to make a choice.
Now, let’s say that a friend complicates Angela’s life by suggesting she consider a lovely little cottage in Vermont. There are mountains for hiking, lakes for swimming, an arts festival, good restaurants, warm dry days, and crisp, cool nights. In addition, the town is near Burlington, where the nightlife is energetic. Finally, Angela’s friend points out to her that since Angela has several good friends who own vacation houses in the area, she’ll be able to spend time with them. Spending time with friends is something she didn’t consider when choosing between California and Cape Cod. Now she needs to add it to her list of attractive features. Furthermore, she may want to reevaluate some of the scores she gave the first two places. She may knock Cape Cod’s weather down a point or two because in contrast with the cool, clear Vermont alternative, it’s not that great.
But this possibility of being near friends gets Angela thinking. Her kids live far away, and she misses them. If being with friends is nice, being with family is nicer. Maybe there’s someplace close to where her kids live that’s beautiful, has nice restaurants, good weather, and things to do at night. Or maybe there’s someplace that they would be interested in going to with her. New possibilities get entertained and another new feature (being with her kids) gets added to Angela’s list.
Clearly, no one option is going to meet all her desires. She’s simply going to have to make some trade-offs.
MICHAEL, A TALENTED college senior, is trying to choose between two jobs. Job A offers a good starting salary, modest opportunities for advancement, excellent security, and a lively, hospitable work atmosphere. Job B offers a modest starting salary, very good opportunities for advancement, decent security, and a rather formal, hierarchical office structure.
While Michael is deliberating between Jobs A and B, Job C becomes available. Job C would take him to an exciting city. All of a sudden, attractiveness of location, something that had not been part of his deliberations, becomes relevant. How do the locations of Jobs A and B stack up against the location of Job C? And how much in salary, security, and so on is he willing to trade to be in this exciting place?
Then the decision gets even more complex. Another job prospect turns up in a location that is close to family and old friends, something Michael had also not considered. How important is that? And then, Michael’s girlfriend lands a very good job in the same city as Job A. How much weight should he give to this factor? How serious is this relationship anyway?
In making a job choice, Michael will have to ask himself several hard questions. Is he willing to trade off salary for advancement opportunities? Is he willing to trade off quality of the job for quality of the city in which it is located? Is he willing to trade off both for being near his family? And is he willing to give up all of this to be near his girlfriend?
PART OF THE DOWNSIDE of abundant choice is that each new option adds to the list of trade-offs, and trade-offs have psychological consequences. The necessity of making trade-offs alters how we feel about the decisions we face; more important, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from the decisions we ultimately make.
Opportunity Costs
ECONOMISTS POINT OUT THAT THE QUALITY OF ANY GIVEN OPTION can not be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. One of the “costs” of any option involves passing up the opportunities that a different option would have afforded. This is referred to as an opportunity cost. An opportunity cost of vacationing on the beach in Cape Cod is great restaurants in California. An opportunity cost of taking a job near your romantic partner is that you won’t be near your family. Every choice we make has opportunity costs associated with it.
Failing to think about opportunity costs can lead people astray. I often hear people justify their decision to buy a house rather than continue renting by saying that they are tired of letting a landlord build up equity at their expense. Paying a mortgage is investing, whereas paying rent is just throwing money out the window. This line of thinking is fair e
nough, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Here’s how far most home buyers take it: “I have to make a down payment of $50,000. My monthly expenses, including mortgage, taxes, insurance, and utilities, will be the same as they would be in a rental. So, in effect, for an investment of $50,000, I get to have my monthly housing costs work for me, building up my equity rather than my landlord’s. And I’m sure that I’ll get more than that $50,000 back when I sell the house.”
No doubt about it, owning your own home is usually a smart investment. But what buyers leave out of this line of reasoning is the opportunity cost of putting that $50,000 into the house. What else could you do with it? You could put that $50,000 into stocks or Treasury Bills, or you could use it to finish law school and increase your earnings, or you could travel around the world and write that novel that you hope will utterly change your life. Some options are more realistic than others, and the wisdom of each depends on your life goals and your timing. As I write this, real estate certainly seems a better choice than stocks, but in 1996, with the market about to soar, $50,000 in the right tech stocks, with the right exit strategy, might have made a fortune. The point is, even decisions that appear to be no-brainers carry the hidden costs of the options declined. Thinking about opportunity costs may not change the decision you make, but it will give you a more realistic assessment of the full implications of that decision.
The Paradox of Choice Page 10