Bias in the spotlight: paradox of choice

The paradox of choice is that while we think more choice would make us happy, the reality is that it often doesn’t. Despite the increase in freedom and autonomy that comes with more choice, there are also two negative effects of having too much choice.

Res_4014007_shelves

Walk into your local supermarket and you are sure to find vast quantities of choice. Psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of ‘The Paradox of Choice’, once counted the number of salad dressings on offer in his local store. There were 175 – and didn’t include the 10 different types of olive oil and 12 different sorts of balsamic vinegar you could use to make your own dressings.

And what about the prolific choice of drugs for a simple headache? The plethora of choice puts us under strain making that decision – and that’s on top of the painful throbbing in our head.

This often overwhelming proliferation of choice in our daily lives has prompted many researchers to challenge the conventional view that more choice always makes us happier and increases our welfare. Actually, in many cases it appears to do the opposite, creating:

  1. Decision fatigue where we grow tired of choosing and deciding and perhaps stick with the status quo: “Errr….I’ll just pick the one I usually buy” or delay our decision: “I’ll choose tomorrow…”. For example, one of the best known studies on the paradox of choice, conducted by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, found that the more choice there is, the less people buy. They analysed choices made by shoppers at Draeger’s, a speciality grocers in Menlo Park, California and found that when faced with a greater choice of jam, shoppers actually purchased less. 
  2. Post-purchase ‘angst’ where we are less happy having made a decision in a context with choice overload, worrying whether we have made the right choice – “…Maybe I should have bought the other model?!”.

To some extent, facing choice paralysis for consumer products like salad dressings and jam has no long term detrimental effect on our lives. But for more important decisions such as retirement savings investments or healthcare decisions when treating a severe illness or disease, it can matter much more.

Sheena Iyengar, Professor of Business at Columbia Business School draws attention to four effective strategies to reduce choice paralysis and promote optimal decision-making:

  • Reducing the amount of choice
  • Making clear the consequences of each choice, ideally in a vivid way  
  • Structuring and categorising choice effectively
  • Starting with easy choices before moving to more complex choices.

Each of these four strategies enables cognitive strain to be reduced, making it more likely we will pick something and feel happy about our choice. Remembering that less can often be more and that we need to think hard about exactly how we present several choices can reap positive outcomes and make for happier consumers.

By Crawford Hollingworth at The Behavioural Architects

 

We hope you enjoyed this article.
Research Live is published by MRS.

The Market Research Society (MRS) exists to promote and protect the research sector, showcasing how research delivers impact for businesses and government.

Members of MRS enjoy many benefits including tailoured policy guidance, discounts on training and conferences, and access to member-only content.

For example, there's an archive of winning case studies from over a decade of MRS Awards.

Find out more about the benefits of joining MRS here.

0 Comments


Display name

Email

Join the discussion

Newsletter
Stay connected with the latest insights and trends...
Sign Up
Latest From MRS

Our latest training courses

Our new 2025 training programme is now launched as part of the development offered within the MRS Global Insight Academy

See all training

Specialist conferences

Our one-day conferences cover topics including CX and UX, Semiotics, B2B, Finance, AI and Leaders' Forums.

See all conferences

MRS reports on AI

MRS has published a three-part series on how generative AI is impacting the research sector, including synthetic respondents and challenges to adoption.

See the reports

Progress faster...
with MRS 
membership

Mentoring

CPD/recognition

Webinars

Codeline

Discounts