The Paradox Of Choices

The world as we know it offers plenty of choices. From buying a pair of jeans, you’re bombarded with an array of about 4-5 choices of cuttings and fits. When purchasing a laptop, you too are bombarded with so many different colors and specifications for it.

Gone were the days when people are only given two choices and making a “right” choice is much easier than it is right now. I was just watching a video on TED talk by Barry Schwartz, where he talks about the “paradox of choices”. He said that when we are given so many choices, we often give ourselves false expectations of what we should get. Let’s say if we were to buy a pair of jeans, and it’s a slim fit, and it was a good choice. But we may have expected it to be perfect given the number of choices, but we might end up regretting and thinking to ourselves, “Well, I like this slim fit, but perhaps the tight fitting one would be better”.

It wasn’t like that those days where all jeans were standard cuts, so now even when we get better jeans, our satisfaction level is lower because of what might have been, but not. So the dilemma is whether to give customers a high satisfaction level or by giving them the best of jeans.

To loosely quote (by loosely I mean I can’t remember the exact details) Barry Schwartz, he made another example about companies offering investment opportunities. When the staffs were given two options of investment, more people invested. But when 10 options were given, each with its own benefits and drawbacks, the number of investors dropped because many put off till tomorrow to make a decision and as you know it, tomorrow never comes.

People spent too much time being unique while God has already made them unique.

Too many choices may be counterproductive.