23 October 2020

Unhappiness resulting from too many choices


From an article published by the Stanford Center on Longevity:
Summary: We presume that more choices allows us to get exactly what we want, making us happier.  While there is no doubt that some choice is better than none, more may quickly become too much.  Drawbacks include:
  • Regret:  More options means constantly considering the option we didn’t choose –decreasing satisfaction overall.
    • Instead, learn to accept “good enough” and stop thinking about it.
  • Adaptation: By becoming accustomed to whatever we’ve chosen, the availability to more options decreases our satisfaction with our choice.
    • Instead, limit thinking about options foregone, and focus on the positive of the option chosen.
  • Unattainable expectations: With increased options, our expectation escalates until we constantly expect to get precisely what we want.  Thus anything less than perfect is disappointing, and we blame ourselves (as the decision makers) for our unhappiness.
    • Instead, control expectations to a certain standard of requirements, and keep them reasonable.
  • Paralysis: Too many options can decrease the likelihood of making any decision at all.
    • Instead, limit options when decisions aren’t crucial.
Largely an issue for modern, affluent Western societies, the paradox of too much choice strains consumers’ capacity for decision making.  Making financial security decisions simple, easy, and justifiable may facilitate increased and happier participation.
The source article has a detailed analysis of what I often refer to as "first-world problems."  Via Boing Boing.  Photo taken at my local Target.

Addendum:  A hat tip to reader dragonmamma for providing the link to this relevant Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:


Reposted from last year to add these interesting thoughts from a column in Harper's:
Even modest restaurants in Japan often present you with a prix fixe menu. Freedom doesn’t mean an abundance of choice so much as liberation from the burden of too much choice.

It took me a long time, after meeting my wife, to see that the kindest and most thoughtful thing to do in many situations was not to ask her where she wanted to eat or go. To take the decision myself was to free her from both the burden of choice and the responsibility that follows (knowing that, when it came to what to wear or what to eat at home, she’d extend the same kindness by making the decisions for me).

In Japan a son traditionally follows his father into his profession, even if that’s the profession of monk or musician. Rather than choosing what he’ll be good at, he aims to be good at what’s chosen for him.

24 comments:

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  2. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XHNOGHyHRxA/Vgk5AIX35iI/AAAAAAAABPU/_sTwgLeu9NQ/s1600/Cartoon2.jpg

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    1. Added to the post, with credit. Thanks, Dragonmamma.

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  3. Whoops! Wrong song... old brain. Right album though... Joe Jackson... "It's All Too Much"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdOZ98XhWN4
    Two hundreds brands of cookies
    87 kinds of chocolate chip
    They say that choice is freedom
    I'm so free it drives me to the brink

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  4. Of course the opposite doesn't overly appeal ... like when you live in a provincial town and the 'other' supermarket has closed down and the one left, having only so much shelf space, choses middle of the road everything, so nothing is 'HOT' only medium, nothing is 'STRONG' only mid range, please the middle of the road coffee drinkers, not fellas such as me, with the big needs for real man's coffee. And always with the monopolistic brands, which in the local supermarket is Pam's, which is mostly ok, but you know, some of the stuff in the packets was obviously the cheapest they could get. Be nice to have a superbmarket, rather than just a supermarket.

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  5. Was this in response to this tweet: https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1174871396855382016

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  6. I wonder if that might be why the days of three networks seemed so much better? We thought we would be better off with more choice, but instead, we started hearing pretty much ALL voices...and that didn't make us happier or better. In fact, I doubt it even made us more informed. We simply tend to watch those channels where our "gut" agrees that they are about right. And maybe a few contrary voices that our "gut" tells us are not too wrong. And we wind up believing pretty much what we believed all along.

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  7. Yeah, IDK, feels like misplaced nostalgia -- there was a lot of crap on those three channels that we just consumed because it was our only option. More quantity doesn't ALWAYS equate more quality but it does allow for more niche options that might not appeal to everyone. I DO miss the days, though, when there were laws stating that you had to be reporting actual facts to be considered "news" -- Fox "News" Channel's "Opinion/Talking Head" shows are responsible for more misinformed people in America than just about anything else!

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. @Minnesotastan: Why does that not surprise me in the least? It makes their court argument that they have the right to lie as the bases for their legal defense make so much more sense. Since it's "entertainment" and not "news," they can say anything they want. *sigh* Their rabid fan base will either never see this or laugh it off as "liberal propaganda." And I say again: *sigh*

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    3. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/16/facebook-posts/post-fox-news-changing-entertainment-spun-old-sati/
      ...An FCC spokesperson responded in an email, saying that they don’t "have any rules or licensing requirements in which a cable channel might categorize itself as news vs. entertainment."

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  8. Minnesotan, I don't know that your claim is true. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-news-entertainment-switch/

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  9. What is this? I grant that you make a case for the effects of excess choice, but it is a theoretical case; my experience(*) is that choices have become steadily fewer over the past few decades with the abandonment of anti-trust enforcement and the consequent oligopolization of most markets. I am not going to sit here racking my brains for any length of time but I cannot think of a product or service for which I have two or more *good* alternatives; and every year, a few of them drop from one to zero.

    (*) Occam's razor suggests that my experience is neither very typical nor an extreme outlier.

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  10. I worked as a concierge in San Francisco for many years. I quickly realized that when guests asked for suggestions you could only truly give them two options. No matter how much the guests stated the contrary, if you gave guests more than two options they would seem to short circuit. The guests were from all over the country and from all over the world (the majority either European or Asian) and this rule was true across the board.

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  11. Bad link on article
    https://longevity.stanford.edu/the-tyranny-of-choice/

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    1. Thank you so much, Lee. When I repost with updates I don't routinely check the original text for linkrot in the sources.

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  12. Unhappiness from too few choices > unhappiness from too many choices

    YMMV

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  13. I sometimes feel this way, especially with products that I don't already have a favored choice.

    https://youtu.be/VHIcmoY3_lE

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  14. I didn't own a TV until I was 34 (the year I married). I am the son of a preacherman who, being raised in the sticks of southeast Tennessee, wasn't raised with a TV, and so I wasn't either. Thankfully, my good ol' dad bought me virtually any book I wanted (I had read all the Hardy Boys then in existence, the 10-volume Bible Story, and many other books while still at home).

    But the TV thing again.... I remember when there were three channels (ABC, CBS, and NBC...and occasionally a fourth non-network channel). I would watch these when on vacation or what have you. And while there were times--especially back during when soap operas were daytime fare--I longed for more choices, I now have the terrible habit of, when on vacation, surfing through channel after channel after channel, just sure that there must be something BETTER on--even when I'm already watching something good.

    Too little choice makes us long for more, while too much choice makes us long for the other. Worse, all of those cable channels ensures that few, if any of them, make the sort of revenue needed to do well as a company. I would estimate that if it were not possible to get more than, say, seven channel--but you could choose those seven out of all that were offered--we might be just as miserable, since we'd be second-guessing ourselves.

    BUT...if the government or the industry decided FOR us that there were only going to be these seven channels, we'd be upset about that.

    Maybe we can't be pleased....

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  15. I remember four phases of UK television: three channels (about twenty years), four channels (about fifteen years), five channels (about five years), cheap satellite/internet multichannels. Of those phases, the four channel time is my favourite. I think the difference is that, with only four channels, the content needed to be curated. But there is only a little of quality TV content at any time and so the addition of extra channels only increased the amount of crap. And I think these principles apply to pretty much any arena.

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  16. Really good article from April 2002 in harper’s - found it here : http://www.en.utexas.edu/Classes/Bremen/e316k/316kprivate/scans/numbing.html

    It went into my folder of ‘save‘ magazine covers

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    1. On behalf of readers here, thanks for providing a link that's not behind a paywall.

      For subscribers, here's a pdf link to the Harper's version, formatted a bit differently:

      https://archive.harpers.org/2002/04/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2002-04-0079134.pdf

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