When does less actually equal more…

Generally speaking, most people would agree with the statement that “having more choices is better than having fewer choices.” In his 2005 talk, watched by almost 15 million people worldwide, Barry Schwartz talks about how this isn’t always true. While it is no doubt true that having SOME choice is better than having NO choice, it doesn’t follow that more choice is always better than less…sometimes less truly is more.

While there are a few comments from Mr. Schwartz I can’t agree with in the talk, it does seem that in many situations, we’ve created a context where we have so many choices, there is very little chance we end up satisfied with the choices that we make. Think about the last time you walked into a Best Buy to purchase a TV. You would walk to the wall of TV’s and choose between a few options based on the various features they offered. Now, you walk up to that same wall and have a seemingly endless array of TV’s. How can anyone be expected to make a decision they will be happy with, when so many options are present.

Mr. Schwartz talks about how Opportunity Costs are making us less happy with the decisions we make. You might finally decide on the TV you want to purchase, but when you get home, remembering the 50 other options you could have selected from, you find yourself thinking “did I really get the right TV, or would one of the others have been better.” With so many choices available to you, your expectation is that the one you finally select is PERFECT. Perfect is a pretty hard measure to live up to.

While there are places with too little choice and places with too much choice. It is up to us to figure out when having too many additional choices is going to lead to people being less happy with the choices they’ve made.