The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

“If we’re rational, they tell us, added options can only make us better off as a society. Those of us who care will benefit, and those of us who don’t care can always ignore the added options. This view seems logically compelling; but empirically, it isn’t true.”

Schwartz asserts that what seems like a positive thing—an increase in choice— could actually put a strain on people's decision-making process and satisfaction with their choices. This quote helps to frame his statistical evidence on how a plethora of options decreases firm decisions and increases dissatisfaction. By discussing these consumer behavior phenomena, the author establishes his theme on Human Behavior and Decision-Making.

“The burden of having every activity be a matter of deliberate and conscious choice would be too much for any of us to bear. The transformation of choice in modern life is that choice in many facets of life has gone from implicit and often psychologically unreal to explicit and psychologically very real. So we now face a demand to make choices that is unparalleled in human history.”

In this passage Schwartz depicts decision-making as a psychologically laborious task. By highlighting how much choice has increased throughout history, the author paints choice overload as an unnatural and undesirable consequence of modernity. This passage develops his theme on The Relationship Between Choice, Freedom, and Happiness, as he shows how political freedom and increase in choice have gone hand-in-hand, but have not always resulted in more happiness.

“So it seems that neither our predictions about how we will feel after an experience nor our memories of how we did feel during the experience are very accurate reflections of how we actually do feel while the experience is occurring. And yet it is our memories of the past and expectations for the future that govern our choices.”

The author expands his theme on Human Behavior and Decision-Making by observing that people’s decisions are often informed by biased and incomplete information—including their own predictions and memories. Our flawed decision-making process is one reason why Schwartz believes that an increase of choices is a real burden to people’s mental health.

“Susceptibility to error can only get worse as the number and complexity of decisions increase, which in general describes the conditions of daily life. Nobody has the time or cognitive resources to be completely thorough and accurate with every decision, and as more decisions are required and more options are available, the challenge of doing the decision making correctly becomes ever more difficult to meet.”

Schwartz emphasizes how people’s vulnerabilities to making mistakes only increases as the complexity and amount of choices continue to pile up. This quote develops his theme on Human Behavior and Decision-Making, as he points out people’s inherent shortcomings in the decision-making process.

“Our expectation was confirmed: people with high maximization scores experienced less satisfaction with life, were less happy, were less optimistic, and were more depressed than people with low maximization scores.”

Schwartz’s focus on the drawbacks of maximization suggests that caring too much about one’s choices can have real mental health consequences. This discussion adds to his theme on The Relationship Between Choice, Freedom, and Happiness by showing that more choices do not necessarily lead to increased consumer satisfaction—in fact, his research suggests the opposite.

“Studies comparing the well-being of people living in different cultures have shown that substantial differences between cultures in the consumption opportunities they make available to people have very small effects on peoples’ satisfaction with their lives.”

The author questions the notion that having more choices or “consumption opportunities” necessarily makes people more satisfied with their lives. By pointing to evidence that buying options are largely unimportant to people’s happiness, the author develops his theme on The Relationship Between Choice, Freedom, and Happiness.

“We must decide, individually, when choice really matters and focus our energies there, even if it means letting many other opportunities pass us by. The choice of when to be a chooser may be the most important choice we have to make.”

Schwartz develops his theme on Human Behavior and Decision-Making by arguing that the best remedy to choice overload is to voluntarily eliminate decisions from one’s life. This passage emphasizes how crucial it is to guard oneself against feeling overwhelmed and powerless in the face of too many choices.

“In other words, our social fabric is no longer a birthright but has become a series of deliberate and demanding choices.”

The author adds to his theme on The Relationship Between Choice, Freedom, and Happiness by assessing how modern Americans’ social lives have changed compared to previous generations. By becoming a more anonymous and individualistic society, Americans have more options about who to befriend, marry, and work with, but also face the burden of creating and maintaining these connections through their choices.

“A way 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.”

The author recommends developing certain rules to avoid constantly needing to make decisions, building his theme on Solutions to Choice Overload. This pragmatic advice encourages the reader to consider how they could build positive habits into their lives instead of weighing their choices all the time.

“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.”

The author claims that too much choice can be just as oppressive as not enough choice. This passage expands his theme on Human Behavior and Decision-Making as he emphasizes the human need to deal with a few clear options at a time, rather than an ongoing plethora of choices.

“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.”

Schwartz’s discussion on choices and trade-offs suggests that making decisions is not a benign process, but a psychologically taxing one that can lead to over-analysis and regret.

“The emotional cost of potential trade-offs does more than just diminish our sense of satisfaction with a decision. It also interferes with the quality of the decisions themselves. There is a great deal of evidence that negative emotional states of mind narrow our focus. Instead of examining all aspects of a decision, we home in on only one or two, perhaps ignoring aspects of the decision that are very important.”

This passage adds to Schwartz’s theme on Human Behavior and Decision-Making by detailing how the negative emotion around trade-offs influences people’s choices. This discussion explains how an increase in choice, and therefore trade-offs, could create an emotionally volatile decision-making scenario.

“So regret doesn’t seem to serve people well psychologically. And once again, the more options you have, the more likely it is that you will experience regret, either in anticipation of decisions or after them. Which may be a major reason why adding choices to our lives doesn’t always make us better off.”

Schwartz connects increasing choices with opportunities for regret, which is associated with rumination and depression. By making this connection, the author argues that more choices can turn both simple and significant decisions into mental minefields, making people second-guess their decisions and leading them to experience diminished satisfaction.

“Unlike other negative emotions—anger, sadness, disappointment, even grief—what is so difficult about regret is the feeling that the regrettable state of affairs could have been avoided and that it could have been avoided by you, if only you had chosen differently.”

This passage highlights the personal accountability people feel for their decisions, suggesting that regret makes people not only feel bad about their choices, but also about themselves. By connecting choices, regret, and self-recrimination, Schwartz suggests that the more choices people have, the more they have to grapple with personal responsibility and consequences.

“This ubiquitous feature of human psychology is called adaptation. Simply put, we get used to things, and then we start to take them for granted.”

The author explains that adaptation reduces people’s happiness simply because we get accustomed to certain things that used to be novel or exciting. Schwartz urges readers to make informed choices based on the assumption that whatever they pick will not bring them continual happiness. This realistic awareness is part of Schwartz’s theme Solutions for Choice Overload.

“The abundance of choice available to us exacerbates the problem of adaptation by increasing the costs, in time and effort, of making a decision. Time, effort, opportunity costs, anticipated regret, and the like are fixed costs that we ‘pay’ up front in making a decision, and those costs then get ‘amortized’ over the life of the decision.”

Schwartz invites the reader to consider how the more choices they have, the more things they have to consider in order to make the right decision. By using the analogy of a mortgage, the author encourages the reader to not see decision- making as a simple or quick process, but one that continually affects them as they live with the outcome of the decision.

“The lesson here is that high expectations can be counterproductive. We probably can do more to affect the quality of our lives by controlling our expectations than we can by doing virtually anything else.”

The author considers how people can avoid making endless unwise choices in pursuit of pleasure that will only leave them feeling unsatisfied. Rather than running on the “hedonic treadmill” (See: Index of Terms), Schwartz recommends living modestly and keeping special treats to a minimum so they retain their novelty. This suggestion adds to his theme on Solutions to Choice Overload, helping the reader understand how they can avoid the pitfalls of too many choices.

“If you live in a social world, as we all do, you are always being hit with information about how others are doing…This kind of information just can’t be avoided. The best you can do is keep yourself from brooding about it.”

Schwartz positions social comparison as a similar phenomenon to regret. He acknowledges that it is only natural to compare oneself to others, but that it is mentally unhealthy to ruminate on such comparisons. He urges the reader to consider how social comparisons might be fueling their own decision making.

“So overwhelming choice is going to push you in the direction of looking over your shoulder at what others are doing. But the more social comparison you do, the more likely you are to be affected by it, and the direction of the effect tends to be negative. So by forcing us to look around at what others are doing before we make decisions, the world of bountiful options is encouraging a process that will often, if not always, leave us feeling worse about our decisions that we would if we hadn’t engaged in the process to begin with.”

The author connects choice overload with increasing social comparison, which he blames for destroying people’s confidence and satisfaction in their own decisions. This observation builds on Schwartz’s theme regarding The Relationship Between Choice, Freedom, and Happiness, as he aims to prove that increased choice makes people less happy by breeding insecurity and dissatisfaction.

“It seems that as American society grows wealthier and Americans become freer to pursue and do whatever they want, Americans get less and less happy.”

This discussion adds to Schwartz’s theme of The Relationship Between Choice, Freedom, and Happiness as he investigates the puzzling correlation between an increase in Americans’ freedom and choices, and a decrease in their happiness. He argues that having more options has not helped Americans gain real satisfaction in their lives overall, and may foster helplessness and depression.

“Nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that for most people, excessive self-blame has bad psychological consequences. And as we’ll see, it is much easier to blame yourself for disappointing results in a world that provides unlimited choice than in a world in which options are limited.”

Schwartz develops his theme on Human Behavior and Decision-Making by explaining how some people are more likely to blame themselves for poor outcomes of decisions. Since this self-recrimination takes a toll on their mental health, having a myriad of options makes these people more vulnerable to depression. This suggests that there could be a connection between modern society’s vast choices and the upswing in depression.

“Emphasis on freedom of choice, together with the proliferation of possibilities than modern life affords, has, I believe, contributed to these unrealistic expectations.”

Schwartz laments how people set themselves up for disappointment by having unrealistically high expectations about how they can manage every area of life: Work, family, friendships, consumerism. This discussion adds to the author’s theme on The Relationship Between Choice, Freedom, and Happiness by suggesting that modern Americans expect to have a great degree of personal control over their lives, but experience frequent disappointment with how their choices turn out.

“To manage the problem of excessive choice, we must decide which choices in our lives really matter and focus our time and energy there, letting many other opportunities pass us by. But by restricting our options, we will be able to choose less and feel better.”

Schwartz implores the reader to use their personal agency to manage the damaging effects of choice overload in their own lives. In doing so, he expands his theme on Solutions to Choice Overload. This passage invites the reader to consider how they might benefit from restricting choices in their own lives, relieving mental strain and gaining time and energy.