KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE PARADOX OF CHOICE

• In recent decades, there has been a shift towards more choice, individual autonomy and freedom in many domains.
• But more choice does not seem to make us happier — and seems to do the opposite.
  • While objective measures such as wealth have increased, subjective well-being has not.
  • We want choice, but don’t seem to like it.
  • People who are maximisers (who try to choose the very best options), are generally less happy than satisficers (who simply choose what is “good enough”).
• What actually makes us happy:
  • Social ties seem to make us happy, even though they actually constrain our freedom.
  • Expectations and comparisons also play a role in happiness.
• Why too much choice makes us unhappy:
  • It increases the time and effort spent making decisions.
  • More options means we have to consider more trade-offs, and considering trade-offs makes us unhappy.
  • The more options we have, the higher our expectations of how good the outcome can be, and the more likely disappointment becomes.
  • When that happens, we only have ourselves to blame.
• What to do about it?
  • Be aware that more choice is not always a good thing.
  • Use rules and presumptions to reduce the number of decisions you make.
  • Develop your own standards for “good enough”.
  • Stop post-decision research.
  • Practise gratitude.

DETAILED SUMMARY OF THE PARADOX OF CHOICE

There has been a shift towards more choice in many domains

For most of human history, people didn’t really have many choices — and the ones we did face were relatively simple. Today, we face more choices than ever in multiple domains.

Some examples:

• Consumer products. Schwartz gives an example of buying jeans in a store. He asks for “the kind that used to be the only kind” but is given a perplexing range of options.
• Health insurance. It wasn’t that long ago that only one kind of health insurance was available to most people. Now, there are many.
• Retirement. The shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution has brought with it more options.
• Medical practice. Not that long ago, medicine was very paternalistic. Doctors routinely withheld information (including crucial information) from patients and treated them like children. Patients didn’t even have the right to look at their own medical records. Today, patients are given much more responsibility for their own care, but often they don’t want this freedom/burden.
• Career options. Schwartz teaches many talented students with multiple interests, and countless career opportunities. They tend to agonise over having to choose between many options, rather than being thrilled at it.
• How to work. Now that people can work anywhere, they constantly face decisions like whether to check email before bed, or bring their laptop on vacation.
• Relationships and marriage. Couples today face far more decisions than they did in the past, such as whether to live together before marriage, get married, merge their finances, have children, etc.

That shift does not seem to have made us happier