The Problem With Choice
One striking feature of modern civilization is ‘individual freedom’. This freedom is closely associated with ‘choice’, the ability to choose from many options. From a chocolate bar to a political party, we can use our cortex to pick the best possible option. A country like ‘The USA’ is also called ‘the land of the free’ because of their extra emphasis on individual liberty.
“We are our choices.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
The idea is simple — when we are given choice, we can pick the one we consider best and control the outcome of a situation to the maximum resulting in more happiness and well-being of a person.
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However, this gift of ‘choice’ comes with a curse of dissatisfaction. Don’t you see people around you unsatisfied with their job, relationship, income and other aspects of life? The more choice we have, the more we seem unsure about the decision and later on dissatisfied. For example, say you bought a new electronic gadget and show it to your friends; what’s the result? Many a time you would be bombarded with suggestions and better alternatives that you could have opted for in a similar price range which makes you feel stupid and dissatisfied even if your choice was pretty good to fulfil your needs.
“Choose your love. Love your choice.”
― Thomas S. Monson
This unexpected outcome of choice was first studied by American psychologist Barry Schwartz who published a book on the topic titled “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less” in 2004 and a paper titled “Doing Better but Feeling Worse” in the same year. In the words of Schwartz and co-author Andrew “Unconstrained freedom leads to paralysis”.
In no way does it mean that choices are bad. They improve the quality of life in general, allowing us to pursue individual goals that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. We can not imagine our life without freedom of choice. But, it is much easier to choose from 4–5 options than from 20–25 of them. Choices are good but that does not mean the more choice we have, the better it is. In my opinion, choices are like money which after a certain point does not improve the quality of our well-being.
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