The choice pushes us to a dead end and leads to the degradation

THE PARADOX OF CHOICE

American psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a Central tenet of Western societies: freedom of choice. From his point of view, the choice is not free, but on the contrary, paralyzes us.

Today you can find dozens of dressings for salads, hundreds of pairs of jeans in different shades and styles, thousands of laptops - the choice is yours. I wonder what would we do if all goods were faceless, without good stories and bright advertising campaigns? Actually, this is the question of why there are brands.


But there is a more global questions, and let's start with them. We do not inherit the identity, we invented it. And we can change as often as you want. This means that every day, waking up in the morning, You should decide what kind of person You want to be. Even the question of our personal identity has become a matter of choice. To be a man or be a woman - You decide.




With respect to marriage and family, there was a time when it was considered self-evident that almost every married as soon as he could, and then started to the kids as soon as they could. The only real choice was to anyone, not when and not what to do after that. Today we are free in their choice. However, many do not even have a choice with whom to marry.

There is a wide selection causes two negative effects:

1. Rather, it paralyzes than frees. Having lots of options, people find it difficult to have any choice. Many are ready as much as you want to transfer the task to "tomorrow", but would not suffer from the choice.

2. Even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the results made us choice than if we had fewer options for him.





There are at least 2 reasons:

1. With such a huge range of spices for salad, if You buy one, and it will be not perfect, it's easy to imagine that You could make a different choice that would be better. It turns out that the imaginary alternative makes You regret the decision You took, and this unfortunately reduces the satisfaction You feel from your choice, even if it was a good choice. The more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything that You are not satisfied with the choices You made.

2. What economists call opportunity costs. Even Dan Gilbert said: "how we value things, depends on what we compare them". Thus, when alternative options to assess a lot, it's very easy to imagine the positive aspects of the rejected alternatives, and this makes us less satisfied with the alternative, which we chose. The opportunity costs reduces the satisfaction derived from choices made, even if it is unusually good. And the more options we consider, the more attractive features of these options we include in the cost of missed opportunities.

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