The Paradox of Choice

by Barry Schwartz

  But not too much. Second-order decisions can help here. When we decide to opt out of deciding in some area of life, we don’t have to think about opportunity costs. And being a satisficer can help too. Because satisficers have their own standards for what is “good enough,” they are less dependent than maximizers on comparison among alternatives. A “good investment” for a satisficer may be one that returns more than inflation. Period. No need to worry about opportunity costs. No need to experience the diminution of satisfaction that comes from contemplating all the other things you might have done with the money. Will the satisficer earn less from investments than the maximizer? Perhaps. Will she be less satisfied with the results? Probably not. Will she have more time available to devote to other decisions that matter to her? Absolutely.

  There are some strategies you can use to help you avoid the disappointment that comes from thinking about opportunity costs:

  Unless you’re truly dissatisfied, stick with what you always buy.

  Don’t be tempted by “new and improved.”

  Don’t “scratch” unless there’s an “itch.”

  And don’t worry that if you do this, you’ll miss out on all the new things the world has to offer.

  You’ll encounter plenty of new things anyway. Your friends and coworkers will tell you about products they’ve bought or vacations they’ve taken. So you’ll stumble onto improvements on your habitual choices without going looking for them. If you sit back and let “new and improved” find you, you’ll spend a lot less time choosing and experience a lot less frustration over the fact that you can’t find an alternative that combines all the things you like into one neat package.

  5. Make Your Decisions Nonreversible

  ALMOST EVERYBODY WOULD RATHER BUY IN A STORE THAT PERMITS returns than in one that does not. What we don’t realize is that the very option of being allowed to change our minds seems to increase the chances that we will change our minds. When we can change our minds about decisions, we are less satisfied with them. When a decision is final, we engage in a variety of psychological processes that enhance our feelings about the choice we made relative to the alternatives. If a decision is reversible, we don’t engage these processes to the same degree.

  I think the power of nonreversible decisions comes through most clearly when we think about our most important choices. A friend once told me how his minister had shocked the congregation with a sermon on marriage in which he said flatly that, yes, the grass is always greener. What he meant was that, inevitably, you will encounter people who are younger, better looking, funnier, smarter, or seemingly more understanding and empathetic than your wife or husband. But finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and “trading up.” The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, “I’m simply not going there. I’ve made my decision about a life partner, so this person’s empathy or that person’s looks really have nothing to do with me. I’m not in the market—end of story.” Agonizing over whether your love is “the real thing” or your sexual relationship above or below par, and wondering whether you could have done better is a prescription for misery. Knowing that you’ve made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have rather than constantly second-guessing it.

  6. Practice an “Attitude of Gratitude”

  OUR EVALUATION OF OUR CHOICES IS PROFOUNDLY AFFECTED BY what we compare them with, including comparisons with alternatives that exist only in our imaginations. The same experience can have both delightful and disappointing aspects. Which of these we focus on may determine whether we judge the experience to be satisfactory or not. When we imagine better alternatives, the one we chose can seem worse. When we imagine worse alternatives, the one we chose can seem better.

  We can vastly improve our subjective experience by consciously striving to be grateful more often for what is good about a choice or an experience, and to be disappointed less by what is bad about it.

  The research literature suggests that gratitude does not come naturally to most of us most of the time. Usually, thinking about possible alternatives is triggered by dissatisfaction with what was chosen. When life is not too good, we think a lot about how it could be better. When life is going well, we tend not to think much about how it could be worse. But with practice, we can learn to reflect on how much better things are than they might be, which will in turn make the good things in life feel even better.

  It may seem demeaning to accept the idea that experiencing gratitude takes practice. Why not just tell yourself that “starting tomorrow, I’m going to pay more attention to what’s good in my life,” and be done with it? The answer is that habits of thought die hard. Chances are good that if you give yourself that general directive, you won’t actually follow it. Instead you might consider adopting a simple routine:

  1. Keep a notepad at your bedside.

  2. Every morning, when you wake up, or every night, when you go to bed, use the notepad to list five things that happened the day before that you’re grateful for. These objects of gratitude occasionally will be big (a job promotion, a great first date), but most of the time, they will be small (sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window, a kind word from a friend, a piece of swordfish cooked just the way you like it, an informative article in a magazine).

  3. You will probably feel a little silly and even self-conscious when you start doing this. But if you keep it up, you will find that it gets easier and easier, more and more natural. You also may find yourself discovering many things to be grateful for on even the most ordinary of days. Finally, you may find yourself feeling better and better about your life as it is, and less and less driven to find the “new and improved” products and activities that will enhance it.

  7. Regret Less

  THE STING OF REGRET (EITHER ACTUAL OR POTENTIAL) COLORS many decisions, and sometimes influences us to avoid making decisions at all. Although regret is often appropriate and instructive, when it becomes so pronounced that it poisons or even prevents decisions, we should make an effort to minimize it.

  We can mitigate regret by

  Adopting the standards of a satisficer rather than a maximizer.

  Reducing the number of options we consider before making a decision.

  Practicing gratitude for what is good in a decision rather than focusing on our disappointments with what is bad.

  It also pays to remember just how complex life is and to realize how rare it is that any single decision, in and of itself, has the life-transforming power we sometimes think. I have a friend, frustrated over his achievements in life, who has wasted countless hours over the past thirty years regretting that he passed up the chance to go to a certain Ivy League college. “Everything would have been so different,” he often mutters, “if only I had gone.” The simple fact is that he might have gone away to the school of his dreams and been hit by a bus. He might have flunked out or had a nervous breakdown or simply felt out of place and hated it. But what I’ve always wanted to point out to him is that he made the decision he made for a variety of complex reasons inherent in who he was as a young man. Changing the one decision—going to the more prestigious college—would not have altered his basic character or erased the other problems that he faced, so there really is nothing to say that his life or career would have turned out any better. But one thing I do know is that his experience of them would be infinitely happier if he could let go of regret.

  8. Anticipate Adaptation

  WE ADAPT TO ALMOST EVERYTHING WE EXPERIENCE WITH ANY regularity. When life is hard, adaptation enables us to avoid the full brunt of the hardship. But when life is good, adaptation puts us on a “hedonic treadmill,” robbing us of the full measure of satisfaction we expect from each positive experience. We can’t prevent adaptation. What we can do is develop realistic expectations about how experiences change with time. Our challenge is to remember that the hig
h-quality sound system, the luxury car, and the ten-thousand-square-foot house won’t keep providing the pleasure they give when we first experience them. Learning to be satisfied as pleasures turn into mere comforts will ease disappointment with adaptation when it occurs. We can also reduce disappointment from adaptation by following the satisficer’s strategy of spending less time and energy researching and agonizing over decisions.

  In addition to being aware of the hedonic treadmill, we should also be wary of the “satisfaction treadmill.” This is the “double whammy” of adaptation. Not only do we adapt to a given experience so that it feels less good over time, but we can also adapt to a given level of feeling good so that it stops feeling good enough. Here the habit of gratitude can be helpful too. Imagining all the ways in which we could be feeling worse might prevent us from taking for granted (adapting to) how good we actually feel.

  So, to be better prepared for, and less disappointed by adaptation:

  As you buy your new car, acknowledge that the thrill won’t be quite the same two months after you own it.

  Spend less time looking for the perfect thing (maximizing), so that you won’t have huge search costs to be “amortized” against the satisfaction you derive from what you actually choose.

  Remind yourself of how good things actually are instead of focusing on how they’re less good than they were at first.

  9. Control Expectations

  OUR EVALUATION OF EXPERIENCE IS SUBSTANTIALLY INFLUENCED BY how it compares with our expectations. So what may be the easiest route to increasing satisfaction with the results of decisions is to remove excessively high expectations about them. This is easier said than done, especially in a world that encourages high expectations and offers so many choices that it seems only reasonable to believe that some option out there will be perfect. So to make the task of lowering expectations easier:

  Reduce the number of options you consider.

  Be a satisficer rather than a maximizer.

  Allow for serendipity.

  How often have you checked into your long awaited vacation spot only to experience that dreaded “underwhelmed” feeling? The thrill of unexpected pleasure stumbled upon by accident often can make the perfect little diner or country inn far more enjoyable that a fancy French restaurant or four-star hotel.

  10. Curtail Social Comparison

  WE EVALUATE THE QUALITY OF OUR EXPERIENCES BY COMPARING ourselves to others. Though social comparison can provide useful information, it often reduces our satisfaction. So by comparing ourselves to others less, we will be satisfied more. “Stop paying so much attention to how others around you are doing” is easy advice to give, but hard advice to follow, because the evidence of how others are doing is pervasive, because most of us seem to care a great deal about status, and finally, because access to some of the most important things in life (for example, the best colleges, the best jobs, the best houses in the best neighborhoods) is granted only to those who do better than their peers. Nonetheless, social comparison seems sufficiently destructive to our sense of well-being that it is worthwhile to remind ourselves to do it less. Because it is easier for a satisficer to avoid social comparison than for a maximizer, learning that “good enough” is good enough may automatically reduce concern with how others are doing.

  Following the other suggestions I’ve made may sometimes mean that when judged by an absolute standard, the results of decisions will be less good than they might otherwise have been—all the more reason to fight the tendency to make social comparisons.

  So:

  Remember that “He who dies with the most toys wins” is a bumper sticker, not wisdom.

  Focus on what makes you happy, and what gives meaning to your life.

  11. Learn to Love Constraints

  AS THE NUMBER OF CHOICES WE FACE INCREASES, FREEDOM OF choice eventually becomes a tyranny of choice. Routine decisions take so much time and attention that it becomes difficult to get through the day. In circumstances like this, we should learn to view limits on the possibilities we face as liberating not constraining. Society provides rules, standards, and norms for making choices, and individual experience creates habits. By deciding to follow a rule (for example, always wear a seat belt; never drink more than two glasses of wine in one evening), we avoid having to make a deliberate decision again and again. This kind of rule-following frees up time and attention that can be devoted to thinking about choices and decisions to which rules don’t apply.

  In the short run, thinking about these second-order decisions—decisions about when in life we will deliberate and when we will follow predetermined paths—adds a layer of complexity to life. But in the long run, many of the daily hassles will vanish, and we will find ourselves with time, energy, and attention for the decisions we have chosen to retain.

  Take a look at the cartoon on page 236. “You can be anything you want to be—no limits,” says the myopic parent fish to its offspring, not realizing how limited an existence the fishbowl allows. But is the parent really myopic? Living in the constrained, protective world of the fishbowl enables this young fish to experiment, to explore, to create, to write its life story without worrying about starving or being eaten. Without the fishbowl, there truly would be no limits. But the fish would have to spend all its time just struggling to stay alive. Choice within constraints, freedom within limits, is what enables the little fish to imagine a host of marvelous possibilities.

  Notes

  Prologue

  Many years ago–I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). See especially the essay “Two Concepts of Liberty.”

  Nobel Prize–winning economist and philosopher A. Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 2000).

  Chapter 1

  A typical supermarket See G. Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) for data on the number of items available in supermarkets. Cross points out that the number of different items available in supermarkets has doubled every ten years or so since the 1970s.

  Americans spend more time Studies on time spent shopping and attitudes toward shopping are reviewed by R.E. Lane in The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 176–179.

  A recent series S. Iyengar and M. Lepper, “When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, 79, 995–1006.

  Third, we may suffer F. Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).

  There are now several Two very influential examples from this movement are J. Dominquez and V. Robin, Your Money or Your Life (New York: Viking, 1992), and S.B. Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy (New York: Warner Books, 1995).

  Chapter 2

  In discussing the introduction The Smeloff quote and the Yankelovich survey appear in an article by K. Johnson (“Feeling Powerless in a World of Greater Choice”) in the New York Times (August 27, 2000, p. 29).

  And in Philadelphia The information on phone-and electric-service shopping comes from an article by J. Gelles (“Few Bother to Search for Best Utility Deals”) in the Philadelphia Inquirer (June 20, 2000, p. A1).

  Just how well do people See W. Samuelson and R. Zeckhauser, “Status Quo Bias in Decision Making,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1988, 1, 7–59. On retirement investment decisions, see S. Benartzi and R. Thaler, “Naïve Diversification Strategies in Defined Contribution Savings Plans,” 1998 working paper (Anderson School at UCLA).

  The attitude was well described A. Gawande, “Whose Body Is It Anyway?” New Yorker, October 4, 1999, p. 84.

  According to Gawande J. Katz, The Silent World of Doctor and Patient (New York: Free Press, 1984); on patient autonomy, see also F. H. Marsh and M. Yarborough, Medicine and Money: A Study of the Role of Beneficence in Health Care Cost Containment (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990). For a brilliant discussion of the
complexities that surround issues of patient autonomy, see C.E. Schneider, The Practice of Autonomy: Patients, Doctors, and Medical Decisions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  But he also suggests Gawande, “Whose Body Is It Anyway,” p. 90.

  When it comes to See S.G. Stolberg, “The Big Decisions? They’re All Yours,” New York Times, June 25, 2000, Section 15, p. 1.

  And beyond the sources Statistics on the use of nontraditional treatments appear in M. Specter’s “The Outlaw Doctor,” New Yorker, February 5, 2001, pp. 46–61.

  The latest indication On advertising of prescription drugs, see M. Siegel, “Fighting the Drug (Ad) Wars,” The Nation, June 17, 2002, pp. 21–24.

  What do you want to W. Kaminer, “American Beauty,” American Prospect, February 26, 2001, p. 34. See also M. Cottle, “Bodywork,” New Republic, March 25, 2002, pp. 16–19; and S. Dominus, “The Seductress of Vanity,” New York Times Magazine, May 5, 2002, pp. 48–51.

  The average American See K. Clark, “Why It Pays to Quit,” U.S. News and World Report, November 1, 1999, p. 74.

  Even how we dress J. Seabrook, “The Invisible Designer,” New Yorker, September 18, 2000, p. 114.

  According to a recent The statistics on religious belief are taken from D. Myers, The American Paradox (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).

  Sociologist Alan Wolfe A. Wolfe, Moral Freedom: The Search for Virtue in a World of Choice (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). The quote comes from his article “The Final Freedom,” New York Times Magazine, March 18, 2001, pp. 48–51.

  Amartya Sen has A. Sen, “Other People,” New Republic, December 18, 2000, p. 23; and A. Sen, “Civilizational Imprisonments,” New Republic, June 10, 2002, pp. 28–33.