I know some of my friends have read a particular book on the paradox of choice, and while I haven't personally read that book, I came across in my current read this information, which I think is similar in concept, and something I can personally agree with. I want to share it with you:
*According to happiness researchers (yes, there are experts who measure happiness), we are less happy than we used to be. There are a number of well-studied and well-documented reasons for this, and a few obvious ones (famine, poverty, disease, and war, anyone?), but surprisingly, a leading cause of unhappiness, at least in developed nations, appears to be our overabundance of choice. In the last few decades, rates of depression have dramatically increased worldwide, a curve that corresponds with the upsurge in choice, indicating perhaps that having too many options fosters stress, anxiety, and uncertainty.
"Choice fatigue" seems counterintuitive, because choice is good, right? Well, not so fast. Our consumer culture is relentless, and the more choices we have - the more information we're bombarded with - the more effort we invest in evaluating our options, and the more likely we are to be dissatisfied with the outcome.
The more options we're given, the poorer our decision-making abilities become. Most of us hate making trade-offs and will avoid making choices until we absolutely have to; the decision-making process is fraught with bad feelings from the start. At the same time, most of us are bad at dealing with uncertainty and at estimating odds, especially since we often don't possess enough information to properly calculate probabilities. After spending so much time weighing trade-offs and trying to sift through a deluge of information, our expectations rise so high that we often end up disappointed when the outcome is not as perfect as we had hoped. Consumer satisfaction is nothing more than the miracle of reality matching our expectations.
What's worse, we often adapt to our overabundance of choices by picking things haphazardly and acquiring more than we need. The more we own, the more we get used to all of the stuff surrounding us, and the less special it feels. That's not to say that the only remedy for choice fatigue is getting rid of choice altogether. Rather, we need to find ways to maintain a level head when making choices, and to keep a healthy distance between the destabilizing allure of advertising and ourselves.
(*from Worldchanging, p.33-34)
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3 comments:
Yup, that's pretty much exactly what that book is about except that the author says that and then repeats it over and over and over for like 400 pages.
Yeah, Laurie whinges about that fact. I'll agree, the book could have been edited down to about 100 pages. But it's some good stuff.
More than just making us less happy; it also states that we make worse decisions when offered too many choices. Too much choice, too much to consider, lockdown. Poor decision making. Still working at lame stressful job.
Yeah that "we make worse decisions when faced with too many choices" thing was in the blurb I posted too. But I'm sure there was actually psychology behind it that was outlined in the book. It's all good, Anthony. Find something you love and go with it. Make it that simple.
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