Spoilt For Choice

March 14, 2004 11:20 PM

Choosers Can Be Beggars: Can Too Much Choice Be A Bad Thing? So many options, so little time to choose! So many potential mistakes to be made. Here's a good set of relevant links, for those who'd like to read more. [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso (19 comments total)

A lot of us will have experienced research fatigue, reading dozens of reviews and threads before deciding which digital camera or car to buy; which channel to watch; which software to download; which recipe to follow - but does too much choice actually cause anguish? Christopher Caldwell's piece is only a book review, but I thought it raised (or at least summarized) some interesting questions.

I'd just add that I chuckled and recognised my own behaviour when I read this, from the main link:

Researchers of cognitive dissonance in the nineteen-fifties found that consumers would continue to read ads for a new car after they'd bought it but would avoid information about other brands, fearing post-purchase misgivings.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:21 PM on March 14, 2004

You know... I never understood people that could not make decisions. If I like something and it is within my price range, I will buy it. Sometimes its good to shop around so you don't feel like an idiot when you see the same product for much less, but sometimes you just go for it. It seems credit cards help people with decision making problems, because you don't see the money more buys are impulse buys. I definitely agree on the fact that we don't know what we want, and our prediction of what will make us happy, when given what we thought would make us happier than anything turns out to be mild content.
posted by spidre at 11:58 PM on March 14, 2004

make us happier than anything turns out to be mild content.

ever since the nipple from hell was forced on the superbowl sheep, all anyone wants is mild content.

what? content?
never mind.
posted by quonsar at 1:14 AM on March 15, 2004

Researchers of cognitive dissonance in the nineteen-fifties found that consumers would continue to read ads for a new car after they'd bought it but would avoid information about other brands, fearing post-purchase misgivings.

This also describes my behaviour when I buy almost anything of value. I thought it was just me!
posted by salmacis at 2:13 AM on March 15, 2004

Some of this sounds pretty dubious

It turns out, for instance, that people will often consciously choose against their own happiness.Tversky and a colleague once asked subjects whether they’d prefer to be making thirty-five thousand dollars a year while those around them were making thirty-eight thousand or thirty-three thousand while those around them were making thirty thousand. They answered, in effect, that it depends on what the meaning of the word "prefer" is. Sixty-two per cent said they’d be happier in the latter case, but eighty-four per cent said they’d choose the former.

Maybe a few percent of people think it's worth earning extra money to increase the happiness of their families, rather than themselves?

It helps explain... why so many marriageable singles wind up alone. You await a spouse who combines the kindness of your mom, the wit of the smartest person you met in grad school, and the looks of someone you dated in 1983 (as she was in 1983) . . . and you wind up spending middle age by yourself, watching the Sports Channel at 2 a.m. in a studio apartment strewn with pizza boxes.

Maybe another few percent of people just don't want to get married?

This article seems to make huge assumptions about what motivates people, and not very consistent assumptions either.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:44 AM on March 15, 2004

Hey! Gosh Darnit™ ! (FCC approved-for-media swear) - I was going to post that quote, but I'll add -

To put a sharper point on TheophileEscargot's observation, Tversky seems to be unaware of recent research which has shown that humans are highly sensitive to inequalities in wealth and status, and that human happiness seems at least partially based in perceptions of relative inequality. In terms of money, it's not absolute wealth that's especially important - it's whether or not others are doing substantially better than you are.

So, Tversky's subjects were actually maximizing their happiness, in a "rational" way - which was based on their instinctual makeup. In other words, they were choosing their happiness.
posted by troutfishing at 4:11 AM on March 15, 2004

My brother, who gets a lot of monetary compensation from his job, informed me one day that having enough money to buy anything you want is actually a curse. He said that when your refrigerator dies, for example, and you're on a budget, you end up finding the best replacement based on a subset of all the refrigerators available in your price range. When money is not a factor, then you're forced to examine every single model. He told me that when you apply that to every single purchase you have to make, it can be exhausting and overwhelming.

I told him that I had a hard time mustering even the tiniest amount of sympathy.
posted by crunchland at 4:41 AM on March 15, 2004

I think you've got that wrong troutfishing - 84 percent chose to make less than their peers, but more in an absolute sense. That directly contradicts the recent research which says that they would be happier in the other case (making more than their peers). Although most subjects recognized this and agreed they'd be happier taking less money overall, but more than everyone else.

Me I'd be happier with more cash, even if everyone around me is making more than me, since it is my buying power that seems to make me happy. That is, as far as money has the ability to contribute to my happiness, which is to say, not all that much.

Overall I thought the links were pretty good, since I have experienced (in times of high stress) that inability to make minor decisions. The major decisions always seem easier to me than deciding where to have lunch on a given day.
posted by bashos_frog at 4:44 AM on March 15, 2004

I was a research assistant for Barry Schwartz during the summer of 2001. Most of the research I was doing was about the properties of regret, how they might affect decision-making.

You know... I never understood people that could not make decisions. If I like something and it is within my price range, I will buy it.

For instance, one of the themes that Schwartz worked on is that there are two types of decision-makers: 'maximizers' and 'satisficers.' A maximizer is a person who constantly tries to maximize their utility when they make a decision, while a 'satisficer' is a person that sets a utility threshold and goes for the first option that satisfies this threshold.

To make it a little more concrete, when shopping for a digital camera, a maximizer will constantly go to every possible store, trying to find some combination of the lowest price and the best features while a satisficer will decide 'Oh, $300 and 3 megapixels is good enough for me' and snags the first camera that meets that criteria.

Similarly, there are people who flip through TV stations and settle on something they like and some people who continue to flip looking for something better. Or there are some people who will try on every possible sweater at every possible store before deciding and some people who just see something that doesn't completely suck and buy it.

What's the upshot of this distinction? Maximizers are more susceptible to post-purchase regret and increasing the number of choices is more likely to decrease their total satisfaction. If you're a miximzer in terms of choosing ice cream flavors, you're better off choosing from 32 flavors instead of five hundred flavors (Barry had this funny anecdote where he visited some fancy ice cream boutique with 500 flavors and he insisted, to the server's bemusement, that he get a scoop of vanilla),

Moreover, people who are maximizers in one facet of their life are likely to be satisficers in another facet and vice versa. Hence, a person who spends all day scanning the racks of their video rental store for the perfect movie to watch that night could possibly get married to the first girl who is sorta nice to him, etc.

---

Another concrete example: Another study that Barry did was about how the number of choices of topics for an extra credit paper affects students' performance on the paper. He found that if you offer more topics (let's say 25 possible topics instead of 5), not only do fewer students decide to do the extra credit paper, their average grade for the paper is lower.

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bashos mentions how minor choices trip him up, while major decisions don't. For me, I have a similar problem. When I'm considering some major purchase (like the first time I bought a used car in '96, before auto websites were really popular), I tend to avoid really researching it deeply because I'm intimidated by the hassle of understanding how to approach the decision. On the other hand, if I'm just trying to decide what to eat at the mall food court, I'll endlessly wander from joint to joint (do I want to pay $3 for Taco Bell or $5 for pizza or...). Which is completely irrational.

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Another distinction that Barry makes is between increasing the number of choices in one domain (like increasing the number of flavors at an ice cream shop) and introducing choice into a domain that previously had no choice before (like euthinasia or genetic engineering). In the former case, increasing choice is a simple matter of affecting the calculus of making the decision. There are increased costs (having to research all these new choices of ice cream flavors) and increased benefits (having one of those new flavors be better than your previous favorite flavor). Hence, there is probably some 'optimal' number of choices (which contradicts standard micro-economic theory, which would argue that the more choices there are, the better).

It's the latter case, introducing choice into areas of our life which never had choice before, is a much stickier proposition. Take genetic engineering, for example. Our societal values don't prepare us for choosing what traits our off-spring would have, so that it would be near impossible to make a rational decision (at least until people get used to the idea of designer babies).
posted by alidarbac at 4:56 AM on March 15, 2004

bashos_frog - You're right. I got that reversed. So the calculus was more subtle, at the conscious level, than I thought. The subjects were quite aware that (up to a point anyway) status was more important than absolute pay levels. Interesting.

alidarbac - I like that, " 'maximizers' and 'satisficers.' " - it clarifies the behaviors. In general I would say that the 'satisficers' are far happier for the fact that maximization is a never ending ideal. How can one be sure, really sure, that one has gotten the best deal ?

'Maximizing' turns quickly into an obsessive-compulsive disorder which can consume so much time and energy that it pretty much obliterates any happiness and enjoyment in life.

Spend all day staring at a computer screen researching the best deal on a digital camera, or - go outside and take a walk in the beautiful spring weather.

"Our societal values don't prepare us for choosing what traits our off-spring would have, so that it would be near impossible to make a rational decision" - Perhaps, but I'm fairly sure I know which traits I would choose for my offspring : intelligence, physical vigor, and, over all, a resilient and optimistic tempermant.
posted by troutfishing at 5:20 AM on March 15, 2004

a heuristic i use is to find something reasonably good, then go with the next thing that's better. i read this was what people did unconsciously when, for example, choosing fruit, and it seems to work pretty well.

incidentally, the discussions on askmefi about what knife to buy strike me as a very good example of people wasting time with way too much choice (i can understand that a professional chef might give it a passing thought, but that doesn't explain how popular those questions are).
posted by andrew cooke at 5:26 AM on March 15, 2004

The question about work choices seems a bit thin. What of the situation where one would have a choice between more money, little time off, bad work environment Vs. Less money, more time off, good work environment.

I realize they have to simplify to make the study work, but most people surveyed about what makes them like or dislike a particular job, money comes pretty far down the list.* Things like being appreciated, vacation, work environment, etc. score far higher.

Comparing dollars to dollars is easy, generally the higher number wins. Comparing intangibles where you can't do the calculus, that is hard. Those are the ones some of us loose sleep over. There is no "right answer," only shades of gray.

As an aside, In my work I can make large decisions with far reaching impact fairly well out of hand. In my personal life I can get lost in the decision making quagmire rather easily. Anyone else experience this kind of schism?

*Wish there was a ready citation, but alas, I cannot recall where this bit of information was found.
posted by jester69 at 5:57 AM on March 15, 2004

Alidarbac: thank you for the superb examples and memories from Barry Schwartz's research.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:12 AM on March 15, 2004

incidentally, the discussions on askmefi about what knife to buy strike me as a very good example of people wasting time with way too much choice (i can understand that a professional chef might give it a passing thought, but that doesn't explain how popular those questions are).
I think they're over-complicating things again here. Some people like to shop. They like to set themselves a goal and achieve it, they like bonding with their friends on shopping expeditions, they like the competitive aspect of who can get the best deal.

Sure, lots of people spend more time shopping than the money saved would justify. And if put on the spot, they get defensive about it, might say "gosh, I'm a victim of forces beyond my control". But I think the truth is they don't want to admit to such a pleasure that's seen as shallow and materialistic.

I think the same thing applies to the (gasp!) single in your thirties thing. When you're interrogated by someone with very different values to you, it's easier to imply that you've failed to achieve their goals, than say you have different goals.

I do that myself. When a new parent finally finishes their hours-long exposition upon the color, texture and odor of their baby's shit, turns their insomnia-reddened eyes and haggard face to me and says accusingly "why haven't you settled down", it's easier to say "I guess I haven't met the right person" than honestly declare "I would rather be boiled alive in my own intestines than be like you"...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:24 AM on March 15, 2004

Tversky seems to be unaware of recent research which has shown that humans are highly sensitive to inequalities in wealth and status, and that human happiness seems at least partially based in perceptions of relative inequality.

I'd be willing to bet ya lunch that any such recent research is a response to Tversky and Kahneman. The point remains, though, that it's still perverse -- preferring to have a Yugo in a world where everyone else has noisy scooters to a world where you have a Volvo and everyone else has a Mercedes is, well, perverse and dumb. Which isn't to say that it doesn't happen. just that it's yet another way in which people are a problem to ourselves.

There are some problems with their research, IMHO -- a lot of it tends to be asking people hypotheticals rather than observing actual behavior in constrained-choice situations. But that means that they're not observing behavior, they're observing what amounts to survey responses, and there's ample research out there to predict that survey responses should be unstable in the ways that they find.

I suspect it's also true that a lot depends on the pressures on the decision-maker. You're more likely to see maximizing behavior when the chips are down in a repeated way -- in one or another business settings, say -- because if you repeatedly screw up, you get to stop being a firm. Which isn't to say that firms actually sit down and maximize, just that whatever it is they do internally tends towards the same results as if they were maximizers. When there's no pseudo-evolutionary pressure eliminating people who choose badly -- ie, on the consumer side, or with voters, etc -- you tend to get satisficing or nonrational decision making.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:56 AM on March 15, 2004

I read this a couple weeks ago and found it both obvious and unpersuasive. There is a commercial on tv now for (I think) Carl's Jr. which shows a guy in a store staring at shelves and shelves of bread, unable to decide which loaf to buy. This seems preposterous to me. More information to parse may result in a delayed choice, but it needn't make one utterly unable to choose.
posted by rushmc at 9:03 AM on March 15, 2004

great article. i mostly agree with the author. unlimited freedom of thought and action is not a good stimulator of happiness. it's usually the opposite. why else would organized religion be such a hit?

...

regarding the inequitable salaries ...

After reflexion (but we admit rarely this fact), we envy first the one who possesses the object (this last one having finally a minor importance). And, in certain cases, we would feel more satisfaction in the fact than the Other does not possess the object, rather than to have it ourselves.

- rene girard

for me, it's much more simple. remove material desire and happiness ensues. simple to say, difficult to achieve.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:59 AM on March 15, 2004

You await a spouse who combines the kindness of your mom, the wit of the smartest person you met in grad school, and the looks of someone you dated in 1983 (as she was in 1983)

Actually, I'm waiting for someone whose company I like better than my own. For me, high praise to someone I'm dating would be "Being with you is as good as being alone."

I've only met one woman who understood what I meant by that and took it as the compliment it was intended to be. Others have felt insulted to various degrees. I therefore consider it a good litmus test.

Time is running out for a woman to win me over, though. The older I get, the more satisfied I am with my own company.

I'm not overwhelmed by choice. I'm overwhelmed by choice that doesn't meet my needs.

I did spend a good amount of time researching the car I bought, but the larger the purchase, the more reasonable it is to do so. A car is a fairly major purchase, one that you will be living with for a few years, so if you don't research it thoroughly, you're bound to be disappointed when you later find out you could have got something better.
posted by kindall at 10:06 AM on March 15, 2004

unlimited freedom of thought and action is not a good stimulator of happiness. it's usually the opposite. why else would organized religion be such a hit?

I don't think the correlation you presume is very high.

I'm not overwhelmed by choice. I'm overwhelmed by choice that doesn't meet my needs.

Well said!
posted by rushmc at 2:14 PM on March 15, 2004