Review: The Paradox of Choice
The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More by Barry Schwartz
The first sentence of the “Acknowledgments” in Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice explains a lot:
“The ideas in this book began to develop when I was invited by Marty Seligman to contribute an article [...] to the journal American Psychologist.”
To me, that statement summarizes a lot of what’s wrong with this book.
There are a few good points here, and some new and eye-opening ways of looking at the choices we make. But to me, it seems like someone took a long essay and tried to expand it into a book. There seems to be a lot of repetition, an over-abundance of examples, and a lot of stretching in the middle. That said, I do recommend this book for its perspective. In a society that values more and more choices, it’s interesting to read why Schwartz thinks there can be too many choices.
Schwartz starts by explaining the problem. We have many more choices—both in product purchases and in our life decisions—than previous generations had. He also talks about the psychology of choice—how people make their decisions, and why he believes those decisions are often based on faulty logic.
Schwartz follows this with an exploration of why we are unhappy even with all these choices. He talks about “opportunity costs”—the disappointment we feel about losing the things we liked about our unchosen options. He talks about how reversible decisions keep us from attaining closure about a decision, and therefore make us less happy about it. He talks about how regret—and the fear of future regret—can cripple us in our decision making. And he talks about how self-blame for perceived bad decision-making can lead to depression.
The final chapter offers Schwartz’s advice on how to deal with the problem—things like limiting the number of choices we consider, and being grateful for the things we have.
I found Schwartz’s examples and studies explaining the problem interesting—if a bit drawn out. And I thought there was some real value in the discussion of the reasons all these choices can make us unhappy. Having gone through depression myself, I found Schwartz’s discussion about it very interesting. He theorizes that self-blame—feeling responsible for the bad choices made in the past—can cause depression. Perhaps this is part of why depressed people sometimes feel that making any choice (e.g., what to wear) is overwhelming. I also appreciated his discussion of how people can get so over-whelmed by decisions that they feel paralyzed. I’ve been there, sometimes even hoping external forces will make some difficult decision for me, just so I didn’t have to feel responsible and face regret.
But I disagreed with some of what Schwartz said too. I found his ideas about our poor decision-making skills—and how we don’t know what we really want—very dis-empowering. What about intuition and trusting yourself? I prefer to believe my instincts are good.
Besides, if poor decision-making skills really are the problem, then shouldn’t we address those things? If we base decisions only on the “peak” of past experiences, then isn’t the answer to make a study of that behavior and consciously correct that in ourselves? If the problem is that we give too much weight to anecdotal evidence from our peers, then isn’t the answer to do more research on studies, trends & averages? These weren’t the answers Schwartz suggested, though.
Mind you, there were some of Schwartz’s suggestions I liked. The “Attitude of Gratitude” is something I had started trying to practice even before I read this book. There are a lot of benefits to being grateful for what you have. And it’s good to settle for “good enough” in areas that aren’t that important to you—instead of comparing yourself to others and wanting perfection in every area. But I’m still not sold on the idea that considering fewer choices is better. And his suggestion to stick with what you always buy unless you’re truly dissatisfied, instead of trying new & improved products…? Well, that just sounds sad to me. I feel like there are new things to experience, new tastes to try—and that being open to new things is part of the adventure of life.
I don’t agree with everything Schwartz says here. And I think he could have made his point in a much more condensed way. But I still recommend at least a skim of the book, for its new way of looking at the choices we all face in our lives.
