The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less [Paperback]

this is a fantastic book that manages to articulate a set of ideas and experiences that I have had for a long time. namely that whilst choice has been fetishised in western societies, and become an unquestionable good, in fact a lot of the time choice a) it makes us uncomfortable (and unable to choose!) and b) doesn't deliver what we expect. this book predominantly deals with a).

one of the main points in the book is that different types of people deal with choice differently. satisficers will choose something that meets their needs, whilst maximizers will try and find the "best" option from all the choices available (it's not a simple split, some people approach different choices in different ways but anyway....). I definitely fit into the latter category. however what this book explains is that as a result maximizers will often be unhappy. this is so on the money. the amount of time I spend agonizing over some choices, and then questioning them afterwards to ensure that I didn't miss something.

there are some really interesting examples in here that I've been boring people to death with. for example the one about people buying jam. they are far more likely to buy one jam when there is only a choice of half a dozen than when there is a choice of twenty or more. it seems we get paralysed by too much choice. similraly there is a great story about people's responses to a hypothetical choice between using different vaccines - one guaranteed to cure one third (but only one third) of those it's used on, and an experimental one that will cure everyone if it works but there's only a one in three chance it will work. how you phrase the proposition has a big impact on how people respond. finally there is genuinely surprising (to me anyway) evidence that people in more restrictive communities are happier.

that said I have found quite a few people hostile to the idea that choice can be a bad thing when I've discussed this book with them. it's currently politically correct to advocate freedom of choice and want to expand it. as such I find that some politico types (more commonly but not always right-wing) are extremely threatened by any criticism of choice.

but to me that demonstrates why this is such a useful book.

I remember reading about ten or twelve years ago of Russian immigrants to the West who were overwhelmed by the choices in the average supermarket. Accustomed to a choice of cereal or no cereal, they became paralyzed when confronted with flakes, puffs, pops, sugared or not, oat, wheat, corn, rice, hot or cold, and on and on. Now, according to Barry Schwartz, we are all overwhelmed by too many choices.

No one is immune, he says. Even if someone doesn't care about clothes or restaurants, he might care very much about TV channels or books. And these are just the relatively unimportant kinds of choices. Which cookie or pair of jeans we choose doesn't really matter very much. Which health care plan or which university we choose matters quite a lot. How do different people deal with making decisions?

Schwartz analyzes from every angle how people make choices. He divides people into two groups, Maximizers and Satisficers, to describe how some people try to make the best possible choice out of an increasing number of options, and others just settle for the first choice that meets their standards. (I think he should have held out for a better choice of word than "satisficer.")

I was a bit disappointed that Schwartz dismissed the voluntary simplicity movement so quickly. They have covered this ground and found practical ways of dealing with an overabundance of choice. Instead of exploring their findings, Schwartz picked up a copy of Real Simple magazine, and found it was all about advertising. If he had picked up a copy of The Overspent American by Juliet Schor or Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin instead, he might have found some genuine discussion of simple living rather than Madison Avenue's exploitation of it.

I enjoyed the first part of The Paradox of Choice, about how we choose, but the second half, about regret and depression, seemed to drag. Fortunately, I was able to choose to skim the slow bits and move right to the more interesting conclusion, about how to become more satisfied (or "satisficed") through better decision-making.

I like an author who can keep a good, coherent argument going through an entire book, and to give Barry Schwartz credit I certainly think he does that here. It didn't hurt that I was ready to agree with him before I even started reading -- my own dislike of consumerism disposed me favourably towards his pro-simplicity argument straight away -- but, anyhow, I think it's fair to say that he makes his case thoroughly and backs it up with wide-ranging and relevant evidence.

I have a couple of caveats, some quite important. First, when I say the argument is made thoroughly, that doesn't mean that I think the book necessarily needs to be over 200 pages long. In fact, it really does begin to drag after about halfway through. The examples become overwhelmingly repetitive -- more and more of the same -- and the prose becomes laboured, as though the author knows in his heart he has said all he needs to say. His recommendations at the end of the book, for coping with excessive choice, have a desultory air about them, and I don't think Schwartz really has any suggestions that haven't been made more clearly and insightfully by others.

I can't help feeling that he could have made his points in about half the number of pages, maybe less. That would have been a good example to set, for someone so keen to extol the virtues of economy and simplification. But I guess that would have made his publisher's job of shifting the book somewhat less simple -- less than two hundred pages and people feel they're not getting their money's worth, right?

In spite of all that I nearly gave this book four stars, but I've knocked off another point for Schwartz's spectacularly ignorant dismissal of Voluntary Simplicity at the end of his introduction. Bizarrely, he uses an American magazine called 'Real Simple' as an example to try to show the limitations of this growing movement. He says that all the magazine does is encourage people to think more about how to achieve their 'wants', rather than trying to think about how to reduce these wants and live more economically. Schwartz is quite right -- that is precisely what that particular magazine exists to do (look at their website and you will see). But he has the wrong end of the stick entirely, because 'Real Simple' has absolutely nothing to do with the Voluntary Simplicity movement. It is a 'home and garden' type magazine that offers time-saving -- and rather expensive -- solutions for busy -- and rather wealthy -- middle-class American housewives. It's like a higher-class version of 'Family Circle'. I can't believe that Schwartz could have been so foolish as to mistake it for a magazine advocating alternative lifestyles. It's about as close to consumerist middle America as you could possibly get.

He then wonders aloud whether people could be attracted to a magazine that tried to focus instead on simplifying by reducing such 'wants'. ("Who would buy such a magazine?" is his curt dismissal.) Well, I don't know if there is a magazine like that but I do know there are hundreds of thousands of people in the US, Britain, and other Western countries, who are actively choosing to simplify their lives by reducing consumption, working less, and focussing more on quality of life than money. Call it 'simple living', call it 'downshifting' -- call it what you will, there is a large, well-established and intellectually respectable (read Duane Elgin's book 'Voluntary Simplicity') social movement out there trying to engage with precisely the same problems that Schwartz outlines in this book, and he appears blissfully ignorant of it.

I feel a little bit guilty because I've said mostly critical things in this review. Hopefully you'll notice that I've still given it three stars -- I do think quite well of this book, and I'm glad I read it. If nothing else, in spite of its flaws, the book got me thinking a little. And I'm always grateful for that.