A few weeks ago, a friend asked me for a cup of coffee. I hesitated because I wanted to limit my caffeine intake for the week, but I did it anyway since I needed coffee so badly to boost my mood and productivity.
As we walked downstairs to the mall to visit the coffee shop, she asked me what type of coffee I wanted, and I replied, “I think a hot latte would be great,” then she opened her phone to order it. The coffee shop where we’d like to order requires the customers to order it through the app instead of buying it directly via the cashier. It was weird for me as I used to order directly at the store throughout my life rather than using an app.
A few minutes later, she asked me again which size I liked. Consciously I’d like to have a small one since I don’t like my latte with too much water. I could see her choosing the menu on her phone and scrolling around to find the coffee she’d like while walking around the mall. When I thought it was a done order, she asked me again what beans I liked. Surprisingly, I had to choose among four beans: light, medium, dark, and decaffeinated.
I never choose decaf because it goes against the reason for ordering coffee in the first place. I chose a dark roast. Then, she asked me again which coffee origin I’d like, which included Ethiopia, Costa Rica, and Colombia. I didn’t know what kind of coffee taste for each of origins. But, since I was only familiar with Ethiopia, I chose it. I asked her if there was anything else I could get and she said, “Which milk you’d prefer?” I had to choose among normal, almond, oats, and soybean. Almond it is.
I asked her again if my order was ready. She responded, “Yes, it’s done.”
I was so relieved from the abundance of choices I had to make. Ordering a cup of coffee takes so much mental effort now. A few years ago, the most common way to order coffee was to tell Barista I wanted a hot long black without any extras. Life used to be simpler.
I had a similar experience when a friend asked me to accompany her to buy a new bag. She kept looking at different stores but needed help finding the best one. I told her to define the bag type, color, and price, then decide. But, she kept comparing multiple brands and stores to find the best one, which included brand status, personal preferences like type and color, price, and trendiness.
When she had found her best choice at that time, she was relieved. I also was relieved. We then spent time walking around the mall to find some food. While having our lunch, I asked her, “Are you satisfied with your choice?”
She said no as she saw a better and nice looking bag while we were walking to find some food. It was ridiculous because it felt like a never ending pursuit of the “best one” which can and cannot be good for our sanity.
What my friend experienced can be explained by economist Fred Hirsch. He referred to it as the “tyranny of small decisions”:
We say to ourselves, “Let’s go to one more store,” or “Let’s look at one more catalog,” and not “Let’s go to all the stores” or “Let’s look at all the catalogs.” It always seems easy to add just one more item to the array that is already being considered. So we go from 6 options to 30, one option at a time. When we’re done with our search, we may look back in horror at all the alternatives we’ve considered and discarded along the way.
The Paradox of Choice
This made me think about how the modern world has spoiled us with countless decision-making options. So many options are available, whether it’s choosing a phone to buy, a restaurant to eat at, shoes to wear, milk to drink, places to go, perfume to use, movies to watch, games to play, books to read, or a car to drive. Options are abundant, but we rarely know what to do about them.
Now we have what is called Choice Overload:
The tendency for people to get overwhelmed when they are presented with a large number of options, often used interchangeably with the term paradox of choice.
This phenomenon is known as the paradox of choice and it is becoming a concern in the modern world, where more and more options are becoming easily available to us. The paradox of choice stipulates that while we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having an abundance of options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice. If we only had to choose between long black and latte, it is easier to know which option we prefer, since we can easily weigh the pros and cons. When the number of choices increases, so does the difficulty of knowing what is best. Instead of increasing our freedom to have what we want, the paradox of choice suggests that having too many choices actually limits our freedom.
Before we go deeper on choice, let’s take a step back to understand on why do we need choice in the first place.
One of the central tenets of western societies is freedom. Freedom means power. People want a power. Freedom gives us a sense of control over things that we want out of life so no one has to decide on our behalf. Freedom is often associated with choice. The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice.
But, do we really need to maximize choice to give us more sense of freedom? Will we feel more satisfied with more choice in our hands?
In his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Barry Schwartz explains:
When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.
Negative Impact of Abundance Choice
In today’s modern world, most of us have realized how having more freedom to choose has positive impact to improve life. We can consider the alternatives and then select the best out of them. But, as Schwarts explained that as the number of choices grew further, it no longer liberates us and makes us happier. Now, we are trapped in the tyranny of choice that makes us less happy with our decisions.
There are mainly two negative impacts of abundance choice:
1. Paralysis, rather than liberation
According to data that Schwartz had on Vanguard, one of the biggest investment companies in America, based on one million employees’ data in around 2.000 workplaces, the participation rate of investment programs went down by 2% for every additional 10 mutual funds offered to employees to participate.
Why?
It’s because it gets harder to choose with more mutual fund options offered to employees. More employees were paralyzed for not being able to choose from their options. With more options offered, employees had to analyze more things. Hence they were less likely to make any major decisions.
2. Less satisfaction in the end
Even if we managed to overcome the paralysis phase and made a decision, we would end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than we would if we had fewer options in the first place.
This happened to my friend who bought a bag mentioned at the beginning of the post. The reason is simple:
As we have more options, we tend to feel dissatisfied with the decision we made simply because it’s easier to imagine that we could have made another decision that would have been a better one. This imagined better alternative makes us regret our decision as it looks like a flaw. After all, the comparison is a thief of joy.
My friend could have been happier if she didn’t see a better bag while we were walking to find food. Imagine that. At times, we may believe that we need to search for something better to find happiness, but perhaps we should appreciate what we already have and recognize that it is what we have been seeking all along.
As we have more choices, we tend to have higher expectations of them. We often compare our decisions to other options, leading to more regret. So it is essential to set standards out of our choice rather than being concerned with better options around the corner.
Maximizer vs Satisficer
With an abundance of choices, two types of people can be categorized based on how they make decisions with given options.
Remember my friend who bought a new bag and was unsatisfied? She is a true maximizer. Maximizers need to be assured that every decision is the best that can be made.
How does she know that any given option is the best possible? It is by checking out all the alternatives. When looking for a new bag, she would look for any features, prices, colors, reviews, and types to find the best one. Maximizers aspire to achieve that goal.
The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfy is to settle for something good enough and not worry about the possibility of something better. A satisficer has criteria and standards. She searches until she finds an item that meets those standards and stops. As soon as she finds a bag that meets her fit, quality, and price standard in the first store she enters, she buys it — end of story. She is not concerned about better bags or better bargains in the next stores.
The difference between the two types is that the satisficer is content with the merely excellent as opposed to the absolute best.
For a satisficer, more options are fine with their decision satisfaction as she has her own standards. As long as an option meets those, she is a happy woman. But, if you are a maximizer, every option has the potential to snare you into endless tangles of anxiety, regret, and second-guessing.
Does this mean maximizers are less happy than satisficers?
In a study done by Schwartz, it was confirmed that 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.
Does this quest for perfection lead maximizers to better decisions?
Maybe. After all, the “best” job is better than a “good enough” job. The best “apartment” is better than a “good enough” apartment. The “best” romantic partner is better than a “good enough” romantic partner. But whereas maximizers might do better objectively than satisficers, they tend to do worse subjectively. Getting the best objective result may be worth little if we feel disappointed with it anyway.
Does this mean being a maximizer is not good at all?
It depends. A real maximizer would figure in the costs (time, money, and stress) of gathering and assessing information. The true maximizer would determine how much information-seeking was needed to make an excellent decision. Only when it had reached the point of diminishing returns would she stop.
Can we become both satisficer and maximizer?
I am a satisficer, but sometimes I maximize on certain things. For example, I always have difficulty choosing which foods to eat at a restaurant that offers various foods and deciding which books to buy or movies to watch on Netflix. On the other hand, it’s easier to buy new phones, shirts, and shoes. I rarely compare and find the best rates. Nobody is a maximizer in every decision, and probably everybody is in some. What distinguishes maximizers from satisficers is the range and number of decisions in which an individual operates as one of the other.
At the end of the day, it really depends on what we seek all along. Do we clearly think about what we are looking for when offered with choice? Why do we need choice in the first place? Do we understand the pros and cons? How many choices do we need to have before we make any decisions? Will we feel satisfied if we make the choice?
At times, humans make irrational choices which can lead to regret. This can happen when we realize there is a better option available. To live a happier life, balancing being a maximizer for certain things and a satisficer for others is important.
Life is so much more precious than just being stuck on deciding some things which can lead us to more regret!
P.S. This post was originally published on Fitgeist.
