This is a thoughtful and thorough analysis about the overwhelm heaped on us by modern consumerism. The author draws from research, personalizing it through is own experiences and observations. At times he takes a stance against having so much choice. I'm more inclined to hope human awareness and technological advancements will help mitigate the worse cases and their effects. ( )

I’ve based this review just based on the Blinkist summary of the book. A summary inevitably misses much but I’ve found the Blinkist summaries to be remarkably good at distilling the essence of the book. And if I find it sufficiently stimulating, I’ll purchase and read the full version. In the meantime, Here ar a few extracts from the summary that seemed to help capture the book:
We now face a demand to make choices that is unparalleled in human history....Even Swarthmore College, a small school with only 1,350 students, offers about 120 different courses to meet the general education requirement, from which students must select just nine......We’re also now presented with a massive selection of different kinds of health insurance, retirement plans and medical care.......The amount of choices available to us has increased over the past decades........
Today, we are constantly offered new options that require more effort from us than ever before......New options within finance and healthcare, for example, demand extensive research, and most people simply don’t feel they have even the most basic skills or knowledge to make wise, informed decisions about such complex areas of life. The last decades have seen burgeoning support for and confidence in the free market, shifting the burden of decision making away from the government and onto the individual. That’s all very well for the more trivial financial decisions in life. But when it comes to choosing the right health insurance, retirement plan or medical care, the stakes for the individual are astronomical.....[Variety] makes it harder to choose wisely and can transform our freedom of choice into a crushing burden.....Even when choosing from just a handful of alternatives, people’s decision making is susceptible to error.
We know that how the experience felt to us when it was at its best or worst, and when it ended is the memory that we retain best. ....Also, our predictions about how a choice will make us feel are rarely accurate......Those students forced to predict what they would feel like eating over the next three weeks turned out less happy with their choice than those choosing for just a week.....This tendency to make errors can only worsen as the number and complexity of decisions increases.
Whichever you choose, the decision involves passing up the opportunities the other option would’ve provided. Unfortunately, [these] opportunity costs reduce our overall satisfaction in the choices we end up making.....Some participants were shown an individual magazine, while others saw the same magazine alongside others. In almost every case, the respondents placed a lower value on the magazine when they saw it next to the others.
So, whenever we have to make decisions involving opportunity costs, we’ll feel less satisfied with our choice than we would if the alternatives were unknown to us.
Consider this study: Two groups encountered a variety of jams at a sampling table. One group could sample only 6 different jams, and the other group, 24. The group who could sample from the larger array were much less likely to ultimately buy one of the jams than the group that were presented with just six......As this shows, increased choice reduces both our power to decide and any pleasure to be gained from what we actually choose.
Human beings, like all other animals, respond less and less to any given event as the event persists–we simply get used to things.....This process is known as adaptation, Lottery winners were no happier than people in general, and......accident victims still judged themselves to be happy (though somewhat less happy than people in general).
The American GDP–a primary measure of prosperity–has more than doubled in the last thirty years, while the American “happiness quotient” has been in constant decline.....So, what’s behind such widespread unhappiness? Put simply, we’re spoiled for choice.
As psychologist Martin Seligman has discovered, failure or lack of control leads to depression if a person explains the cause for the failure as global (“I fail in all areas of life”), chronic (“I will always be a failure”) and personal (“It seems to be only me who always fails”).
This type of excessive self-blame thrives in a world of unlimited choice......And, apparently, we have no one to blame but ourselves......We blame ourselves excessively when we fail to choose wisely.
And since excessive self-blame can lead to depression, there is good reason to believe that our society’s abundance of choice is correlated with the modern epidemic of unhappiness.
As a decision strategy, maximizing [making sure that you research and choose the best] is an overwhelming task since maximizers aspire to choose only the best. If you’re a maximizer, every option has the potential to snare you into an endless tangle of considerations......Maximizers also exert much effort on trying to imagine all other possibilities.....Not only do maximizers overwhelm themselves in this way, but once they’ve finally overcome the difficulty of choosing, and actually make their choice, they’re more likely than others to feel unsatisfied with it.....For this reason, maximizers are especially susceptible to “buyer’s remorse.”....In a world of infinite choices, it is difficult and emotionally exhausting to be a maximizer, never settling for less than the best.
We all know people who can choose quickly and decisively. These people are satisficers
It means searching until you find the option that meets your standards, and stopping at that point.....A satisficer’s world is divided into two categories: options that meet their standard and options that don’t. So when making a choice, they only have to investigate the options within the first category.....And since they don’t strive for perfection when making decisions, they won’t spend time thinking about the hypothetical perfect world in which options exist that offer complete satisfaction......This makes it much easier for them to be satisfied with their choices, and with life in general.
The good news is that most of us have the capacity to be satisficers, even those who consistently feel overwhelmed by choice. All that’s required is to let go of any expectation that “the best” is attainable......our increased affluence and freedom is costing us a substantial decrease in the quality and quantity of social relations, which causes a significant decline in our well-being. Such relations are essential to our psychological health ..... Significant social involvement in families, deep friendships, civic associations and the like, means subordinating the self in order to keep the connections strong.
But how can we achieve that? [becoming a satisficer]. By using rules to constrain ourselves and limit the decisions we face, we can make life more manageable and decrease the likelihood of psychological distress.....For instance, if you adopt the rule that you will never cheat on your partner, you can eliminate painful and tempting decisions that might confront you later on.
By working on restricting our options, we would be able to choose less and feel better.
The key message in this book: Everyday decisions have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming range of choices that modern society presents us with. As the number of choices increases, so do the negative effects choice can have on our psychological well-being. The more options we have, the more difficult it becomes to make a wise decision, and the less satisfaction we will derive from what we actually choose. Therefore, it seems like some degree of voluntary constraint would make everyone better off. By simply choosing less, chances are that we would be more happy.
Become a satisficer: Appreciating and embracing “good enough” will simplify decision making and increase satisfaction. Therefore, think about occasions in life when you’ve settled comfortably for “good enough,” and closely examine how you chose in those areas. Then, start cultivating this “satisficing” strategy in more and more aspects of life.
My take on the book. A fairly simple concept which he has built into a book length. But I think thye Blinkist summary version has given me sufficient information to understand what the concept is about. And I tend to agree. Choice can be stultifying and it’s probsbly worthwhile trying to become a satisficer. (I think I fall into the category of the Maximizer and can see that it certainly has drawbacks. So maybe I’ll try the advice. Also thought making some simple rules for behaviour reduces the stress from choice. So, actually some good advice here. Four stars from me. ( )

This was a very interesting read, though I was skeptical at first if the topic could warrant over 250 pages. It absolutely could, and it was interesting throughout the whole book. The content was easy to understand and very believable, I would recommend it to anyone. ( )

Good review of the psychology of choice and how ir relates to mental health in contemporary society.

In brief having more choice is not always better and can in fact lead to worse and less satisfying decisions. ( )

Useful resource on decision making. ( )

http://pro-libertate.net/node/33 ( )

For those struggling with stress and anxiety that often comes with decision paralysis, this is a great read.

Schwartz describes how having an excessive amount of choice in our lives can bring unhappiness and suffering. He describes some of the many sources of choices in modern life, some psychological factors relating to choice making, how choices can cause unhappiness, and some techniques for dealing with this unhappiness.

First of all, Schwartz emphasizes that choice is good. It is vital to happiness. However, he claims that in the here and now of the 21st century US, we are overwhelmed with choices, most of which are not important and many of which were not faced in the past. Schwartz's claim is that while choice is important, having to use brain power on unimportant choices slowly chips away at happiness. The important choices differ for each individual, so society should not necessarily work to decrease the choices available. However, individuals need to learn how to focus on choices that are important for them and ignore the rest.

Schwartz then discusses decision making. Decision making includes figuring out goals, evaluating the importance of each goal, arraying the options, evaluating each option relative to the goals, pick the winning option, and later using the consequences of the choice to modify future decision making processes. In practice, this process if followed partially and with limited consciousness.

Schwartz proposes that there are two types of choosers: maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers want to make the best decisions. Satisficers have a set of goals and are satisfied with any choice that fulfills those goals. Schwartz claims that maximizers might get objectively better results than satisficers, but satisficers get better subjective results (that is, they are happier). Everyone is a maximizer in some areas and a satisficer in others, but most people have a general tendency one way or the other.

The core of the book explores how choice decreases happiness. There are two key points. First, comparing a choice made with a choice that could have been made generally decreases happiness; it is likely that there is some way in which the another choice was superior to the chosen option, even if it was the best choice overall. Second, people adapt; over time, the happiness derived from a choice decreases, contrary to expectations that the happiness would remain constant. These two factors make people more likely to regret the choices they and more likely to feel they do not have control over their happiness. Furthermore, these factors will be more potent for maximizers because they cannot fall back on the idea that their goals were met.

After making a convincing case that excessive choice can decrease happiness, Schwartz discusses a set of tips for preventing too much choice from decreasing your happiness:

- Choose when to choose. Not all decisions on important. Decide which ones are important to you, and do not worry about the rest.

- Be a chooser, not a picker. Make your decisions based on your goals, not just by picking something out of all the choices available. This means that if nothing fits your goals, you may choose not to take any of the options.

- Satisfice more and maximize less.

- Think about the opportunity costs of opportunity costs. That is, limit how much you think about the opportunities you are missing out on.

- Make your decisions non-reversible. This one seems counter intuitive, but the idea is that if you cannot unmake a choice, you are more likely to try to be satisfied with it and making it work.

- Practice an "attitude of gratitude". If you focus on why the choices you have already made were the right choice to make, you will have an easier time not comparing it negatively to the choices you could have made.

- Regret less. Be a satisficer, not a maximizer. Reduce the number of options you have; you cannot miss what you do not know about.

- Anticipate adaption. Know that the pleasure a choice brings you in the future will probably not be as much as the initial pleasure it gives you so that you will not be disappointed when that happens.

- Control expectations. Set your expectations based on your goals and your needs. Be especially wary of letting others (especially the media or advertising) set your expectations.

- Curtail social comparison. Compare yourself to others less. Try to let your satisfaction be determined by how you feel about a decision, not how the actions or choices of others make you think you should feel.

- Learn how to love constraints. Constraints can decrease the amount of time you spend on the unimportant choices and give you the time to focus on the important ones.

Schwartz justifies his claims reasonably well with citations of psychological studies, and he is generally good at pointing out which claims are his own hypotheses and inferences and which are not. Overall, his arguments are convincing, and his claims generally consistent with my own experience, so I am willing to believe with his overall premise that too much choice can decrease happiness.

My main criticism of The Paradox of Choice is that it often seemed like Schwartz was bulking up his points with repetition to make the book longer. The primary content of the book could have fit into a long essay. Since there is not really a market for long essays these days, I do not blame Schwartz for bulking things up to make it book length.

After reading this book, I am going to consciously try to be aware of when I am making choices, when those choices are decreasing my happiness, and what choices are important to me. That awareness alone is reason enough to have read the book for me. ( )

Needlessly long, labouring the point well past usefulness. Nothing controversial or even surprising. ( )

This is one of those books that, if you read the introduction, you pretty much know what the rest of the book is about. As I wrote in my personal blog for this book, "anyhow, once you read the prologue, the author gives such a clear road map that the incentive to read the rest of the book is minimal other than to read the illustrations for his arguments." I borrowed it from the UHD Library. If I recall, the reason I wanted to read it was because another blog I follow made a reference to it.

See the rest of my note on the book here:

[http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/05/booknote-paradox-of-choice.html] ( )

The author points out the inherent contradiction between our political ideology that says that personal freedom should be unlimited, leaving us free to choose whatever we want, and the psychological reality that too many choices leads to increased dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

This outcome is the confluence of multiple factors: Increased choice means we bear a greater responsibility for the outcomes of decisions; this responsibility compels some people to seek to maximize the value of each choice, which alone is a time-consuming effort that deprives them of other things in life that are known to be more directly related to life satisfactions, like social relationships; but because we cannot consider all possible options, any decision made is already tainted with regret and other negative emotions that decrease the psychological satisfaction and enjoyment of the thing chosen. Although Americans live in a world of increased affluence and choices, the cumulative effect is that we are increasingly miserable and depressed. ( )

A good book that shows how having too many choices can lead to stress and anxiety. ( )

Interesting ideas about abundant choice and its effect on emotional well-being. My main complaint is that this book is a bit oversimplified -- I would have liked more supporting details/citations/anecdotes than Schwartz tended to give... I felt like I already knew most of this coming in based on his appearance on Radio Lab.

Still, interesting. ( )

2,5/5
I've made a bad choice by reading this book out of MILLIONS out there. What a fool I am!

Just kidding. But I gotta say, he focuses a lot on the exemplifying and the such. And when I mean a lot, I mean it.
It's frustrating, it's exhausting, it's time wasting and he did it with less than 300 pages. I think he or its publisher didn't wanted to release such a short book, so they filled it with repetition.
I also need to point there that it's even worse if you're already read [b:Thinking, Fast and Slow|11468377|Thinking, Fast and Slow|Daniel Kahneman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1317793965s/11468377.jpg|16402639] by Daniel Kahneman (quite probably you did), and because it's pretty pessimist overall. I don't agree with many things presented and some conclusions are questionable.

"As this chapter has shown, decisions like these arouse discomfort, and they force indecision. Students take time off, take on odd jobs, try out internships, hoping that the right answer to the “What should I be when I grow up?” question will emerge. One quickly learns that “What are you going to do when you graduate?” is not a question many students are eager to hear, let alone answer. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that my students might be better off with a little less talent or with a little more of a sense that they owed it to their families to settle down back home, or even a dose of Depression-era necessity—take the secure job and get on with it! With fewer options and more constraints, many trade-offs would be eliminated, and there would be less self-doubt, less of an effort to justify decisions, more satisfaction, and less second-guessing of the decisions once made."
Really?

If you've read this and you're still willing to read the book, skip Part I. Seriously. You won't miss anything. It talks about the overload of choices we have e.g. at the supermarket and gives the advice to not care much about so many choices... but if we weren't already doing so, we couldn't live our lives. The main problem with repetition is that he does it throughout the whole book.
I would say that you can skip the first half from Part III too. It could easily be a 4/5 book, but there are many things to improve. ( )

This book is an argument for the idea that the proliferations of choices we choose from is making us sick and in fact is reducing the quality of and happiness surrounding the choices we make. This is basically a research paper turned into a commercial product. I found the book entertaining but incredibly long winded and repetitive. The essential message of the book can be gotten by reading the Prologue: The Paradox of Choice: A road map, Part I: When we choose and Part IV What we can do. What lies between are the details of and the supporting evidence for his premise. The book is dated in its references to technology. It was written in 2004. The book’s message none the less is still relevant for today’s readers. The phenoma it is addressing has only gotten worse. This book is similar to The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg and Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt both these books are better than The Paradox of Choice., in that their basic message, application of their message and writing styles are more concise. That is not to say the book is not worth reading. The supporting data in this book is excellent. It is has a great index and fantastic references. ( )

We now have more choice than ever before but is this a good thing? this book will convince you that sometimes less really is more. ( )

rating 3.25

In The Paradox of choice, Schwatz pulls heavily from a few books to help solidify his points.
Thinking Fast and Slow - Kahneman
Blink - Gladwell
Bowling Alone - Putnam

To oversimplify this book, more choices do not make us happier. They end up making us less satisfied with the choice we have made and frustrate us along the way to make the choice we end up making. Study after study herein referenced showed how we think we want choices but in reality we will pick the same thing we are already familiar with more times than not.

a few tips from the book:
Unless you are dissatisfied stick with what you always buy
Don’t be tempted by new and improve
Don’t scratch unless there is an itch
( )

rating 3.25

In The Paradox of choice, Schwatz pulls heavily from a few books to help solidify his points.
Thinking Fast and Slow - Kahneman
Blink - Gladwell
Bowling Alone - Putnam

To oversimplify this book, more choices do not make us happier. They end up making us less satisfied with the choice we have made and frustrate us along the way to make the choice we end up making. Study after study herein referenced showed how we think we want choices but in reality we will pick the same thing we are already familiar with more times than not.

a few tips from the book:
Unless you are dissatisfied stick with what you always buy
Don’t be tempted by new and improve
Don’t scratch unless there is an itch
( )

I don't think there's much new psychology research in this book, but it's written in an easy-to-read manner. It's particularly worthwhile for those of us who build things in the digital world (and, of course, for anyone who wonders why they are anxious about the choices they make.) ( )

This is another in a seemingly endless procession of recent pop-psych/pop-econ books. So many to choose from!

Like so many others, Schwartz describes concepts and phenomena like opportunity cost, diminishing returns, loss aversion etc. in terms of his thesis. That is, contrary to popular wisdom (side note: with all these pop-psych/pop-econ books out there, I'm beginning to think that only the ideas that have any merit are those that run contrary to popular wisdom.), the widening array of choices everywhere in life has a detrimental effect on our happiness.

For starters, I partially disagree with his premise that freer markets lead to more choice. Freer markets also lead to firm concentration and scale or volume effects, which put downward pressure on the number of choices available. For example, shirts that used to be sold by collar size are now S, M, L, XL. I can't find jeans made with heavier gauge denim anymore. The quirky independent bookstore with the eclectic selection went out of business. But, overall it seems like there are more choices out there in many markets, and that is enough to make his premise functional. Whether there has actually been an increase in the differences between choices (personally, I would bet on a decrease) is another matter.

Next quibble: it isn't until you are well into the book that Schwartz admits the abundance of choice negatively affects only a subset of the population: the maximizers, or those who try to wring every last drop of utility from their decisions. The paradox is not universal. At this point it turns into more of a self-help book for maximizers.

Final complaint: This book is padded for length. Badly. Many sections reminded me of a student trying to stretch his or her essay out to the minimum number of pages, much to the detriment of the book. The thesis is stretched beyond its limits of applicability. A section on the downside of peoples' choices of religion? Another on their choices of race??? And there is example, after example, after example. I will be so, so relieved when today's technological upheavals in the publishing industry finally do away with this standard length (~75,000 words) for popular non-fiction.

Overall I think this is a worthwhile read, especially for those who tend to agonize over their decisions. ( )

Schwartz, with whom I had a pleasant chat at American Psychological Association a while back, contends that while having choices is valuable, more choices don't appear to lead to greater happiness, and may be psychologically detrimental. I enjoyed his arguments, which are closely associated with sociological and psychological studies, and recommend reading this book in conjunction with Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking or The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, or even Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (since you may recall that I didn't care much for the latter, you may shelve Schwartz near it without reading it if you so choose).

Though I agree with the conclusions drawn, in general, Schwartz's arguments seem reductive at times, and without seeing the studies themselves I can't evaluate whether other elements that may be important have been accounted for. Thus, choices are often presented as all-or-nothing, and research participants' pragmatic economic decision-making seems to be overlooked. For example, in studies where a sure bet of receiving $100 is set in opposition to a slightly better-weighted double-or-nothing option, participants' more common choice of $100 is not discussed in relativistic terms (such as would be familiar to readers of Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg) that include the participant's pragmatic life experience of needing to take a safe bet rather than a risky one with the potential for more gain but that might also cause loss.

In addition, those for whom the process of shopping or questing is enjoyable, and those who approach such activities with mindfulness and attention, are not well-represented in Schwartz's argument. Schwartz does allude to a related issue when he notes the possibility of history and cohort effects (though he doesn't say it that way); what is overwhelming for one generation (such as a cell phone) may be par for the course for the next (such as watching a video on an iPhone while texting about something else and pretending to be paying attention in class). ( )

I had such high hopes for this book. I was expecting it to focus largely on consumer culture, and to have some profound 'light bulb' moments that would really make me stop and think. Not that it didn't try, but unfortunately it never really hit the spot for me.

In actual fact, Schwartz focuses more on the psychological than the sociological, and widens his arguments to cover the choices we make in everything from education and careers to houses and cars to jeans and jam. The prevailing theme of the book is how the growth of choice in modern society, and the emphasis on the individual as the maker of choices, has taken us beyond freedom and into the realms of tyranny. Choice no longer liberates us; it spins us into its web and holds us there, stuck in our own uncertainty and fear. We no longer choose between three pairs of jeans in a store - we choose between ten different fits, three different leg lengths and four different colours. The same decision, however trivial it might be, now has higher stakes and many more alternatives to consider. This, Schwartz argues, plunges us into a constant whirlwind of regret, comparison, uncertainty, disappointment and even depression.

I think Schwartz provides a compelling and relatable case against excessive choice, which certainly made me stop to ponder just how much of our time we devote to comparing, researching and choosing between different options in even the most inconsequential areas of our lives. His eleven methods for reducing the negative effects of choice make sense, though for me as one of his 'satisficers' (people happy with 'good enough', as opposed to 'maximisers' who make their task more difficult by always looking for the best) I didn't feel I really had too much to learn from them.

My main problem with the book was that it was just too long. There was a lot of repetition - of ideas, anecdotes and examples - and the middle of the book really started to drag. Cutting the whole thing down by about 50 pages and sharpening the pace would have improved the reading experience without damaging the argument. I also noticed from the notes at the back that some of Schwartz's examples had been directly lifted from other people's work, without it being evident in the main body of text (the notes aren't numbered), which I thought was a bit sneaky. To sum up, maximisers and perfectionists might learn something important from this book, but satisficers - I wouldn't bother. It'd be like preaching to the choir anyway, so use your superior powers of choice to take you on to the next book! ( )

I read this not because it was a required textbook for my social psych course, but because my professor recommended it to me after I admitted to her what a hopelessly indecisive person I am. Schwartz's argument that having more choices is overwhelming definitely spoke to me, though I'm not sure having less choices actually makes decision-making any easier in my case!

Very insightful and very challenging. This was one of the best books I've read in a long time. ( )

This book is about the abundance of choices that we have now and how’s that making our lives even more miserable. Maybe I don’t need a book to tell me that, but sometimes, there are things that we just don’t see. For example, I’m a channel surfer. So imagine what an increase in number of channels do to me… Maybe I’ll just get rid of the television. ;) ( )