The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Amartya Sen is an economist and philosopher from Santiniketan, India. Sen studied at Trinity College Cambridge, where he earned his PhD in 1959. Sen is the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard University. He won the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on the economics of welfare. He has also been awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor, for his work. Sen is the author of numerous books including The Idea of Justice, Identity and Violence, Inequality Reexamined, The Argumentative Indian, and Collective Choice and Social Welfare.

In The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz refers to Sen’s work on human freedom and economic development. He agrees with Sen that “freedom is essential to self-respect, public participation, mobility, and nourishment, but not all choice enhances freedom” (4). Schwartz uses Sen’s work to support his argument that people should question whether an increase in choices truly adds value to their lives, echoing Sen’s position that sometimes more choices can actually diminish real freedom. Schwartz summarizes Sen’s argument about choice from his work Development as Freedom, writing that, “we should ask ourselves whether it nourishes us or deprives us, whether it makes us mobile or hems us in, whether it enhances self-respect or diminishes it, and whether it enables us to participate in our communities or prevents us from doing so” (4).

Daniel Kahneman (1934-2024) was an Israeli-American psychologist who specialized in human thought processes, decision-making, and biases. Kahneman completed his bachelor’s degree at Hebrew University before earning his Masters and PhD from University of California, Berkeley. Kahneman’s last professional position was Professor Emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

Kahneman’s frequent research partner was Israeli-American psychologist Amos Tverksy (see below). Kahneman wrote numerous books on psychology and decision-making, including Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, Choices, Values and Frames, and Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman won several major awards during his career, including the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In The Paradox of Choice Schwartz refers to Kahneman and Tversky’s research to bolster his argument that decision making is often a psychologically taxing—and flawed—process. Schwartz uses Kahneman and Tversky’s work to illustrate numerous psychological biases and phenomena, including the availability heuristic, risk aversion, loss aversion, and the hedonic treadmill, among others.

Amos Tversky (1937-1996) was an Israeli-American psychologist who focused on cognition, bias and risk, especially in regards to decision-making. Tverksy graduated from Hebrew University in Israel in 1961, and earned his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1965. Tverksy began working as a researcher at Stanford University in the late 1970s. In 1982 he won the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution, and was awarded the MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1984. His research with Daniel Kahneman appears in The Paradox of Choice during Schwartz’s discussions of biases in decision making.

Cass Sunstein is an American legal scholar who has worked on behavioral economics, administrative law and constitutional law, among other subjects. He attended Harvard University for his Bachelor’s degree and graduated from Harvard Law School. After teaching at the University of Chicago, Sunstein served as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009-2012. Sunstein currently serves as the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University. He is also well-known for his books, including The World According to Star Wars, which examines human behavior through the lens of the Star Wars movies, and Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Schwartz refers to Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullman-Margalit’s (see below) work in his recommendations to the reader, suggesting that their concept of second-order decisions can help people avoid the worst effects of choice overload. Schwartz explains the four different forms of second-order decisions, which vary from hard rules, such as always wearing a seat belt, to more flexible presumptions, like using the same font setting most of the time. Standards and routines are also types of second-order decisions, as they are built into one’s habits and require little to no deliberation. Schwartz argues, “[B]y 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 people and to the decisions that we can or don’t want to avoid” (114).