Burden of choice: why more options make us less happy

Christian Century, July 13, 2004 by R. Stephen Warner

Schwartz cites several reasons for this, drawing on research in psychology and in behavioral economics. Researchers in the latter field have known for some time that people don't think like adding machines, tallying up potential positive and negative outcomes ("gains" and "losses"), but feel worse about a given unit of loss than about a corresponding unit of gain. And when we contemplate a choice (this or that, yes or no), we know that doing one thing means foregoing another. Foregone alternatives--"opportunity costs," in economists" terms--are losses. Because maximizers think about more alternatives, or think more about alternatives, they also experience more opportunity costs, the sum of which may be greater than the gain from the chosen alternative. They've programmed themselves to be acutely aware of what they're not getting.

To make matters worse, much in our emotional makeup robs us of satisfaction with the choices we make. Regret over a bad choice can take away satisfaction, but the determination to avoid bad choices leads to overinvestment in the decision process. Social comparison means that our satisfaction is predicated on what others have. Schwartz cites research showing that the majority of people would rather be big fish in small ponds, earning $50,000 when others earn $25,000, than small fish in big ponds, earning $100,000 when others earn $200,000. (Many ministers" families can relate to this!)

Most insidious of all is hedonic adaptation. Whenever we find something that does make us happier, we eventually get used to it, and our sense of well-being returns to where it was before the new thing came into our lives. We can never make progress on the hedonic treadmill. (The good news in adaptation is that it also works for things that lessen the quality of life. We get used to them, too. People with chronic diseases and missing limbs move to a new threshold of well-being.)

If this is human nature, a late-capitalist, consumer-driven economy seems designed to torture us. Schwartz glimpsed this possibility when, as a middle-aged man, he went to a Gap store and naively asked for a new pair of blue jeans. The clerk asked if he wanted slim fit, easy fit or relaxed fit; regular or faded; stone-washed or acid-washed; button-fly or regular fly. Spending much longer in the store than he'd planned, investing "time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, anxiety and dread," he eventually settled on "easy fit." Piqued by this experience, he made a loose inventory of his local supermarket, where he found 85 varieties of crackers and 285 of cookies, 230 different soups, 120 pasta sauces and 175 kinds of salad dressing. A book on

American consumerism told him that the typical supermarket carries more than 30,000 items. He began to suspect that at some point "choice no longer liberates. It might even be said to tyrannize."

Predictably, the answer to Schwartz's dilemma offered by one reviewer was for consumers to maintain loyalty to specific brands. Since I do the grocery shopping in my family, I know that brands are part of the problem, not the solution. Covetous of shelf space, companies multiply options within familiar brands, so that it is not sufficient for my wife simply to put Tide or Cheerios on the shopping list. The problem is systemic.