An ocean of choices, a blessing or a curse?
Choice consists of the mental process of thinking involved with the process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them for action.
There is a dogma which the western industrialized societies follow. This dogma is based on freedom, and it says that in order to maximize the welfare of the citizens, the society must maximize their (individual) freedoms.
Freedom is the essence of being human. The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice. The problem with choice is that nowadays it simply exploded.
If you’re sick, you go to the doctor. And the doctor tells you: “Well, to make you feel better, we can do (a) or we can do (b). (a) has these benefits and risks and (b) has these benefits and risks. What do you want to do?“. And you say: “Doc, what should I do?“. And the doctor says: “You can choose (a) or you choose do (b). (a) has these benefits and risks and (b) has these benefits and risks“. If you want to take it even further, you ask: “But doctor, what would you do if you were in my position?“. He would say: “But I’m not. (a) has these benefits and risks and (b) has these benefits and risks. What do you want to do?”.
This is a shifting of burden and responsibility of decision making from someone who is well and knows something (the doctor), to someone who is sick and knows nothing (the patient). Does this look right to you?
Is all this freedom of choice good news, or is it bad news? The answer is yes. It’s both.
Since you know what the good sides of freedom are (you are enjoying them right now), I will write about the the two main negative effects.
Paralysis
With so many options around, people find it very difficult to choose at all. The paralysis is a consequence of the world having too many choices.
Even if one manages to overcome the paralysis and makes a choice, it ends up less satisfied than if it had fewer options to choose from.
The reason for that? With so many options to choose from, if you buy some stuff and it’s not perfect, it’s easy to imagine that you could have made a different choice that would have been better. And what happens next is that the imagined alternative induces you to regret the decision you made. This regret subtracts from the satisfaction you get from the decision you made (even if it is a good decision).
The more options there are to consider, the more attractive features of these options are going to be reflected by us as as the opportunity calls.
Escalation of expectation
Adding options to peoples life can’t help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options would be and what’s that going to produce is less satisfaction with those results (even if they are god results).
With so many options available, our expectations for a particular product go through the roof.
You compare what you got to what you expected, and because you didn’t make the perfect choice (it’s kinda impossible to make a perfect choice), that will make you feel bad.
I think everything was better back when everything was worse.
When everything was worse, it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise. These days, the best you can hope for is that a product is as good as you expect it to be. And since our expectations skyrocketed, we will never be pleasantly surprised by the choices we made.
The secret to happiness in a consumer society is to have low expectations.
Buying bad stuff when there is only one kind to buy makes you ask yourself “who’s responsible?”. And the answer is simple: the world. The world is responsible for producing an inferior product.
Buying bad stuff when there are countless options results in you asking the same question: “who’s responsible”. Only this time, it’s you who’s responsible. With so many choices, there is no excuse for failure.
And so, when people make decisions, even if the decisions and the outcomes are good, people put pressure on themselves because they know that they could have chosen better from the oceans of available options.
This growth of the number of choices is a significant contributor to the explosion of depression in the industrialized societies. People are constantly having disappointing experiences because their standards are extremely high, and when they have to explain these experiences to themselves, they think they are at fault.
The paradox is that we do better (in general) and feel worse.
Of course that some choice is better than none, but it doesn’t follow from that. More choice isn’t better than some choice.
Choices are much like shoes. If too small (the number), they gall and pinch us; if too large, they cause us to stumble and trip.
Expensive complicated choices don’t help. They hurt and make us worse off.
The absence of limits is a perfect recipe for misery and disaster, because it produces paralysis.
I’m faced with a multitude of choices right now, as I finish writing this post. I could choose to publish it now, in an hour or two, or maybe even tomorrow. I could also choose to save it as a draft or send it as a guest post to another blogger.
All these choices certainly have different results, and if choose to publish it now and the amount of readers it draws isn’t what I expected, I could easily imagine that the results would have been much better if I published it tomorrow or used it for a guest post. This may not be the best example but it summarizes the essential.
What’s important is to remember who we really are and what we basically want. It’s very easy to forget these two things and get lost and confused.
What’s your opinion on this subject? Are all these choices helping you?
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Heya,
Your post (again) struck me right through. It really is helpful for my situation now. As I am given two opportunities which I do like both. As per your comment, I’d choose something that I really want and will make me happy.
Yet, I have to weigh down pros and cons.
Having said that, I’d like to add the concept of opportunity cost. It is a term in Economics wherein
“The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action.”
Say in your example buying shoes. When you buy the shoes, you are foregoing the opportunity to say buy your fave book and the pleasure that goes with it. Same is true with every choice we make. In my case, I choose a sales.marketing post which I really like to do, I will forego the opportunity to go to the other side of the world by choosing so.
Hope I made some sense and you got what I mean. You are very good in explaining things and pointing out the logic.
Cheers
Hi Tsina, nice to see you around!
I actually wanted to write a few words on the concept of opportunity cost, but I felt that it would have made the post quite heavy to digest, so I abandoned the idea. It’s a good thing that you’ve pointed it out in your comment though.
I know that sometimes decision making can be complicated. That is due to too much thinking. The best way to make smart decisions is to simplify the problem. In a nutshell: always trust your guts.
I really like the shoe analogy.
I remember reading somewhere before that while people like having choices, their satisfaction level drops down again when they’re faced with too many options. Going to the grocery store is a good way to get frustrated. Want a toothbrush? Well! Not only do they come in many different colors, but you can also choose from the rubbery no-slip grip, the soft bristles, hard bristles, in-between bristles, the one with the tongue-brushing pad, the straight and flex-neck toothbrushes, the glow-in-the-dark toothbrush…
I just want a toothbrush!
Hi there,
Very interesting question followed by insightful comments. Introduce to you a TED talk on a similar note by psychologist Dan Gilbert: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/97.
Indeed, an amazing talk there!
PS: It it a bit heavy…
Great article on choices! Reminds me of the Matrix. Everyone of us are affected by the choices we make in life. Sometimes though, our choices are but an illusion. Marketers and advertisers know it too well.
I think the best choice in life is to accept responsibility for our own actions and outcomes. What others do, we may not be able to control. But what we do and choose to do, we can. =)
Edited. Reason: links to personal pages in the comment body aren’t allowed. They are treated as spam.
Thank you for your comment SJ.
It’s true that we are responsible for the choices we make, but sometimes their multitude is overwhelming. One may get dizzy when faced with so many options, and this can prove to have a very good effect on sales.