Via Marginal Revolution, comes this article from Virginia Postrel. She spends much of the article smacking down the views of Barry Schwartz. If that name is familiar, it might be because that's the same Barry Schwartz who debates Russ Roberts in the NPR interview I linked to here. But Schwartz isn't the only one who thinks we have too much choice.
A sampling from the article:
It’s all too much, declares the latest line of social criticism. Americans are facing a crisis of choice. We’re increasingly unhappy, riddled with anxiety and regret, because we have so much freedom to decide what to do with our money and our lives. Some choice may be good, but we’ve gone over the limit. The result is The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, the title of Yale political scientist Robert Lane’s 2000 book on the subject.
To these critics, providing too many choices is the latest way liberal societies in general, and markets in particular, make people miserable. “Choices proliferate beyond our pleasure in choosing and our capacity to handle the choices,” writes Lane. Like cheap food and sedentary labor, the argument goes, abundant choice is not something human beings are biologically evolved to cope with. We’d be better off with fewer decisions to make.
“As the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear,” writes Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice, published in January 2004. “As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”
Schwartz’s book has become a touchstone, not just for social critics but for self-help gurus and marketing professionals looking for the Next Big Thing. Its argument also offers a scientific-seeming alternative to public policies that expand choice, notably in health care and retirement accounts.
And...
“Consumers tend to return to the products they usually buy, not even noticing 75% of the items competing for their attention and their dollars,” writes Schwartz. “Who but a professor doing research would even stop to consider that there are almost 300 different cookie options to choose among?”
And who but a polemicist pursuing an argument would completely ignore what these habits tell us about the world? In a familiar environment, people aren’t overwhelmed by choice. With experience, we learn to negotiate the alternatives. Schwartz may have trouble in The Gap, but a teenager who owns nine pairs of jeans doesn’t. As Schwartz himself notes, “A small-town resident who visits Manhattan is overwhelmed by all that is going on. A New Yorker, thoroughly adapted to the city’s hyperstimulation, is oblivious to it.”
Schwartz treats this habituation as entirely negative, since it’s why we lose our appreciation of once-new pleasures. “When it first became possible to get a wide variety of fruits and vegetables at all times of year, I thought I’d found heaven,” he writes. “Now I take this year-round bounty for granted and get annoyed if the nectarines from Israel or Peru that I can buy in February aren’t sweet and juicy.”
Habituation is indeed a fact of human psychology. That’s one reason we like novelty, including different cuts of jeans. But grumpy social critics like Schwartz never consider the obvious thought experiment: Would you like to go back to the world with fewer options? Granted, dealing with lots of choices causes frustration and regret. But would you really be happier, once you’d become accustomed to them, if those abundant choices disappeared?
Postrel also writes about "satisficing" and taking search costs into account--a concept familiar to any economist.
Best of all...
Schwartz writes that “the proliferation of choice in our lives robs us of the opportunity to decide for ourselves just how important any given decision is.” To the contrary, only the proliferation of choice gives us the opportunity to make the decisions we individually deem most important.
Postrel has it right. Schwartz's comment makes no sense.
So let me take this one step further. What do these "grumpy social critics" think we should do about all this choice? I can't imagine that they would favor regulation on the permissible varieties of orange juice, toothpaste, or whatever. In fact, according to Postrel's article, Schwartz offers personal advice on "satisficing." Nothing wrong with that, if that's as far as it goes. Isn't it a great world that the publishers of books see fit to publish a variety of books so that someone who happens to be seeking Schwartz's advice can find it among the many books in print? After all, someone might find it useful.
Or am I supposed to feel guilty because I have all these choices and actually like it? Should I long for the days of "one-size-fits-all"? Sorry. I don't. I like my orange juice pulp-free, thank you.
And I, in turn, am confused by people who don't 'get' the concept that an abundance of trival choice actually can limit freedom.
Perhaps their wives or 'significant others' are responsible for the myriad of utterly insignificant choices most of us are confronted by every day?
Perhaps they have access to independent information sources which the rest of us don't? Such as, for instance, ease of repair, availability of English-speaking customer service help?
Perhaps they know which of the several hundred brands of soap on the aisles are sold by which 3 companies?
Or perhaps figuring out which of 100 or so long-distance phone companies are currently offering the best rates for the countries they call most frequently?
Or is it that having 4 energy bills, 4 or 5 bank statements, 2 or 3 phone bills and 5 or more credit card bills to check over for an increasing number of errors and sneakily inserted extra charges each month-- instead of the 3 or 4 total we used to have is a tremendously exhilariting sport for them?
Just call me weird, but I would give a great deal to be able to call the hours I spend each month on this crap my own...
Sarah,
I'm going to key on your first sentence, "And I, in turn, am confused by people who don't 'get' the concept that an abundance of trivial choice actually can limit freedom," particularly the words "abundance of trivial choice."
Different things are trivial to different people. What is trivial to me might be something for which you really want to have choices and vice versa. That is where "satisficing" comes in. Of course, economists think of this as constrained maximization with costs of search. Postrel writes that Schwartz tells readers to look for what is "good enough." Seems like pretty good advice--advice any economist would follow for herself or himself. It's not revolutionary.
I would simply spend less time on the "myriad of utterly insignificant choices" and revel in the fact that on things that really matter to me I get a full range of choices.
You're right, I don't get the concept that an abundance of choices, trivial or not, can limit freedom. Those that are trivial, I don't get stressed over. Those that are important, I appreciate the fact that I have choice.
Of course, separating the trivial from the non-trivial is half the battle, but isn't that just a part of life? Aren't you glad that you have the freedom to determine what is trivial to you and what is not? I am.
William: Aren't you glad that you have the freedom to determine what is trivial to you and what is not? I am.
I'm afraid I don't 'get' this either. The 'freedom to determine what is trivial to you and what is not' is one of those things that, absent murder, cannot be taken away from people. Jews in concentration camps (those that survived) also had that freedom, as Viktor Frankl's works explain.
Do you honestly see no difference at all between having the freedom to choose between 50 or a hundred makes of car and being able to choose whether to travel by car, by train, by metro, or by bus? I suspect a great many of those (most often American) who truly do not get this are people who simply have never had the experience of having meaningful options-- different kinds of things to choose from rather than simply minor variations of the same thing. Most Americans, to continue the transportation analogy, have never lived in a place where there were alternatives to owning a car which were just as fast, efficient and convenient.
Yes, some of this (to me) trivial choice can be ignored: but by no means all of it. I can try to limit the amount of time I have to spend on cars, for instance, by living (as I do) in one of the few American cities with some more or less acceptable transportation alternatives, and by buying a make which the only independent evaluator, Consumer Reports, says has a superior repair record. I will still have to spend time, however, trying to find a place to repair it, getting it registered and inspected, and finding and buying insurance for it. And this is in a place, mind you, where my options are far better than they are in most of the US.
When it comes to my 'free time' (what is left of it), the situation is similar. I am lucky enough to have the choice of a few good pubs and restaurants within walking distance of our new apartment-- but aside from Starbucks there are no coffee houses, certainly no place where neighbors might stop by for a chat, and if I wanted to go to a club or concert I would either have to try to locate one within reach of a metro (and leave early to catch the last metro) or drive and try to find parking.
In any case since I have essentially zero options for work which would either be particularly enjoyable or, alternatively, pay enough that I could live on less than a full time schedule I don't have time in the evenings after doing the necessary chores to go anywhere and still be able to get up in the morning.
To the rather limited degree I understand it, I believe Amartya Sen speaks to this kind of question. I haven't yet found any American economists who seem to be willing to question their own basic assumptions in the same way.
Sarah said... "The 'freedom to determine what is trivial to you and what is not' is one of those things that, absent murder, cannot be taken away from people."
True. But from the context of our conversation, it's pretty clear that you and I were talking about something less extreme. For example, I consider choosing a brand or type of toothpaste to be a trivial decision (something that I spend little time thinking about), but choosing a cell phone provider is non-trivial (and I research it extensively). I'll bet there exists a person for whom the reverse is true, and I'm glad that plenty of choices exist for both of us. I wouldn't want it any other way.
You also said: "Do you honestly see no difference at all between having the freedom to choose between 50 or a hundred makes of car and being able to choose whether to travel by car, by train, by metro, or by bus?"
What gives you the impression that I would see no difference between these to sets of alternatives? Of course there is a difference. You're giving me two menus which are not comparable. I can imagine situations where one menu might benefit me more than the other. I also submit that the best of both worlds would be to choose one out of many different cars and then have the ability to use it when I want, and ride the bus or train when I want. Incidentally, when I was in grad school, I rode the bus to class and drove the car to get groceries. It made a lot of sense. Having the ability to make that choice of mode of transportation AND have choice over what kind of car to drive... well that was just grand.
If we have a misunderstanding or miscommunication, it's probably here. You're claiming that there's a difference between two menus with very different contents. I have no problem with that. You are entirely correct. I'm just saying that 10 varieties of orange juice are better than 1--all other things being equal. That's a different point altogether, and if you disagree, then I think we will have to agree to disagree.
And if you disagree and have a policy prescription to make us better off, I'd like to hear it.
As for Sen, it sounds like you're referring to his latest book. I've seen some reviews but haven't read the book yet.