Choice Overload and Paralysis

The first demonstration that too many choices can induce decision paralysis was provided by Iyengar and Lepper (2000). They reported a series of studies that showed how choice can be “demotivating.” One study was set in a gourmet food store in which the researchers set up a display featuring a line of exotic, high-quality jams. Customers who came by could taste samples, and then were given a coupon for a dollar off if they bought a jar. In one condition of the study, six varieties of the jam were available for tasting. In another, 24 varieties were available. In either case, the entire set of 24 varieties was available for purchase. The large array of jams attracted more people to the table than the small array. When it came to buying, however, 30% of people exposed to the small array of jams actually bought a jar; only 3% of those exposed to the large array of jams did so.

In a second study, this time in the laboratory, college students were asked to evaluate a variety of gourmet chocolates (6 for some participants and 30 for others). The students were then asked which chocolate—based on description and appearance—they would choose for themselves. They then tasted and rated that chocolate. Finally, in a different room, the students were offered a small box of the chocolates in lieu of cash as payment for their participation. The key results of this study were that the students faced with the small array were more satisfied with their tasting than those faced with the large array. In addition, they were four times as likely to choose chocolate rather than cash as compensation for their participation.

Since this initial demonstration, Iyengar (with various collaborators) and others have provided similar evidence from a wide variety of different domains, many of them far more consequential than jams or chocolates (e.g., Botti, & Iyengar, 2004, 2006; Hanoch & Rice, 2006; Hanoch, Rice, Cummings, & Wood, 2009; Iyengar & DeVoe, 2003; Iyengar, Jiang, & Huberman, 2004; Iyengar & Lepper, 1999, 2002). For example, adding mutual fund options to a pension plan menu decreases rate of participation (Iyengar et al., 2004). Participation rate drops 2% for every 10 options, even though by failing to participate employees often pass up significant amounts of matching money from their employers. Though there are no doubt limits to the choice overload phenomenon that remain to be determined, and conditions under which it does not seem to hold (Chernev, 2003; Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, & Todd, 2009), it now seems clear that under a broad range of circumstances, people find a large number of options paralyzing rather than liberating.

The Goals of Choice: Maximizing and Satisficing

Half a century ago, Simon (1955–1957) argued that in choice situations individuals will often “satisfice,” that is, choose the first option that surpasses some absolute threshold of acceptability, rather than attempt to “optimize” and find the best possible choice. Such a satisficing strategy was thought to make manageable the otherwise overwhelming task of evaluating options in terms of every possible piece of information that could potentially be known about each of them. Rather than attempt to engage in an exhaustive and ultimately limitless search for complete information regarding a particular choice, satisficers would simply end their search as soon as an option was found that exceeded some criterion.

Such a strategy makes good sense in a world of ever-increasing freedom of choice. However, many would argue that attendant with increased choice has been a pressure to “maximize,” that is, to seek the very best option available in a wide range of choice domains. And it may well be the case that, for certain individuals, adding more choices to an existing domain simply makes their lives more difficult because they feel pressure to choose the “best” possible option from an overwhelming array of choices rather than simply settle for “good enough.” After all, as the number of choices in a domain increases, so too does the cognitive work required to compare various options, along with the possibility of making a “wrong” or suboptimal choice. Thus, if one follows such a maximizing strategy, the more choices one faces, the greater the potential to experience regret at having chosen suboptimally.

We undertook an investigation to determine whether in fact there are individual differences in the tendency to maximize, and, if so, if maximizers are more unhappy than their satisficing peers (Schwartz et al., 2002). We designed a survey instrument, the Maximization Scale, to identify both maximizers and satisficers, and then examined the potential relation between scores on the scale and a range of psychological correlates, including happiness, depression, optimism, self-esteem, perfectionism, neuroticism, and subjective well-being. We also explored whether these putative relationships might be mediated by a tendency for maximizers to experience more regret with regard to their choices than satisficers. Finally, we examined maximizers' versus satisficers' tendency to engage in social comparison. We reasoned that if maximizers are always on the lookout for the best possible option, one way to do so is to examine the choices of others, especially in domains in which no clear objective standard exists for what constitutes “the best” (Festinger, 1954).

The Maximization Scale includes 13 items that assess a range of attitudes and behaviors that together comprise a tendency to maximize rather than satisfice (for an abbreviated scale with good psychometric properties, see Nenkov, Morrin, Schwartz, Ward, & Hulland, 2008). Thus, respondents are asked to endorse statements reflecting (a) the adoption of high standards (e.g., “No matter what I do, I have the highest standards for myself”); (b) actions that are consistent with maximizing tendencies (“When I am in the car listening to the radio, I often check other stations to see if something better is playing, even if I'm relatively satisfied with what I'm listening to”); and (c) choice behaviors aimed at seeking out the “best” option (“Renting videos is really difficult. I'm always struggling to pick the best one”). We administered the survey to over 1,700 participants in the United States and Canada who ranged in age from 16 to 81 and came from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Different subsamples of our respondents also completed a number of other standard personality measures. Among these were the Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999; n = 1627); the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck & Beck, 1972; n = 1006); a measure of dispositional optimism (Life Orientation Test; Scheier & Carver, 1985; n = 182); a neuroticism scale (John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991; n = 100); a survey assessing subjective well-being (Satisfaction With Life Scale; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; n = 100); a self-esteem measure (Rosenberg, 1965; n = 266); and a subscale of the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Hewitt & Flett, 1990, 1991; n = 220). Finally, we created a five-item scale designed to assess a tendency to experience regret (e.g., “When I think about how I'm doing in life, I often assess opportunities I have passed up”) and administered it to all of our participants.

In terms of self-reported happiness, there was a clear tendency for maximizers to report being significantly less happy and optimistic than satisficers. They were also less likely to report high subjective well-being scores and were more likely to be depressed. Indeed, in one subsample, of the individuals whose BDI scores met the diagnostic criterion for mild depression, 44% also scored in the top quartile for maximization whereas only 16% scored in the bottom quartile. Maximizers also reported lower self-esteem scores and higher neuroticism scores than satisficers, although the latter relationship did not reach statistical significance in our sample, suggesting discriminant validity between the constructs of maximization and neuroticism. In addition, although we observed mildly significant correlations between maximizing and the related construct of perfectionism, the latter correlated positively with happiness in our sample, suggesting that, unlike maximizing, perfectionist tendencies are not necessarily associated with unhappiness. Finally, those who scored high on the Maximization Scale were also much more likely to report experiencing regret.

Statistical analyses showed that individuals' endorsement of the regret items appeared to at least partially mediate many of the relationships between maximizing and the other personality measures, including maximizers' tendency to be less happy and more depressed. It would seem that maximization constitutes a recipe for unhappiness, in that those individuals who search for the best possible option are more likely to regret a choice once made.

In a subsequent study (Schwartz et al., 2002, Study 4), the hypothesized tendency of maximizers to experience greater sensitivity to regret was investigated in a behavioral paradigm that made use of a version of the “ultimatum game” (Zeelenberg & Beattie, 1997). In the study, individuals had the opportunity to propose a division of funds to a second player (simulated by a computer) who could choose to accept or reject the offer. If the offer was accepted, the funds would be divided up as proposed. If the second player rejected the offer, however, neither player would receive any money. Participants played both a standard version of the game and a modified version, in which, after offering a division of funds, they got to learn the other player's “reservation price,” that is, the minimal offer that the other player would have accepted. In short, this modified version created a greater potential for regret of one's offer, for it carried the possibility of learning that one would not have had to be so generous in dividing up the provided funds.

As predicted, in the modified version (i.e., when participants expected to learn the other player's reservation price) maximizers made much more modest offers to their opponents than in the condition in which a participant never had to face the knowledge that a more meager offer would have been accepted. Satisficers did not show this pattern. It would seem that maximizers' greater tendency to experience regret extends to situations involving anticipated regret as well, as their behaviors in this study appeared to be aimed at minimizing the possibility of later regret.

Maximizers were also hypothesized to engage in more social comparison than satisficers—especially upward comparison, in which an individual compares him or herself to someone who is better off, as such a person would presumably provide the best “evidence” that a maximizer has not yet achieved an optimal outcome. Such a tendency was investigated in two studies. In the first (Schwartz et al., 2002, Study 2), maximizers reported on a questionnaire measure that they were more likely to engage in social comparison—both upward and downward—than satisficers, and their greater frequency of upward comparison was associated with increased unhappiness (though their greater frequency of downward comparison did not predict enhanced happiness). The same study also probed respondents' experiences with consumer decisions and found that maximizers reported seeking more social comparison information in making purchases than did satisficers. They also reported engaging in more product comparisons and counterfactual thinking (thinking about alternatives not chosen) regarding buying decisions, along with heightened regret and diminished happiness with their purchases.

A second study (Schwartz et al., 2002, Study 3) examined social comparison tendencies in maximizers versus satisficers using a procedure developed by Lyubomirsky and Ross (1997). In the study, participants performed an anagram-solving task either much slower or much faster than a confederate posing as a fellow undergraduate. Maximizers were heavily affected by their peer's performance, especially when they were outperformed by the peer. They provided higher assessments of their ability to perform the task after working alongside a slower peer than a faster peer, and in the latter condition, their self-assessment declined and their negative affect increased significantly. Satisficers, by contrast, were barely affected by the performance of the other participant, and regardless of whether the situation provided an opportunity for downward comparison (i.e., outperforming a peer) or upward comparison (i.e., being outperformed by a peer), their assessment of their own ability and their affect level remained largely unaffected. In short, maximizers were sensitive to social comparison information and were made less happy when outperformed by a peer; satisficers showed little response to the social comparison information provided by the experimental situation, and their mood remained relatively stable throughout the study.

In a later study, Iyengar, Wells, and Schwartz (2006) tracked college seniors at 15 different colleges and universities as they looked for postgraduation jobs. The seniors had all filled out the Maximization Scale. The study found that people who scored high on the Maximization Scale got better jobs than people who scored low (measured by starting salary), but on a large battery of psychological outcome measures, they felt worse about the job they got, about the entire job search process, and about their lives in general. So being a maximizer seems to enable people to do better when they make a decision, but to feel worse about how well they did.

In sum, in both survey and experimental procedures, maximizers showed themselves to be less happy and more depressed than satisficers. They were more prone to regret, both experienced and anticipated, and they engaged in more social comparison, especially upward comparison, than satisficers. In their quest for the best option, they increased their own unhappiness and regretted their choices more than individuals who reported a willingness to settle for “good enough.” For maximizers, “good enough” evidently was not, but, at least in terms of their own subjective well-being, “the best” was far from ideal.

There is a caveat to this generalization, however. In a recent study of European, North American, and Chinese adults, Roets, Schwartz, and Guan (2012) found that scores on the Maximization Scale did not differ across the different cultures, but that unlike Europeans and North Americans, Chinese participants showed no relation between maximizing score and measures of well-being. Roets et al. (2012) speculated that the Chinese participants cared about the “best” just as much as Westerners did, but that as residents of a collectivist society, the stakes involved in finding the best were lower for the Chinese than for Westerners. For the Chinese, it was suggested, the choices one made were not reflections of identity—of who one was (see Iyengar & DeVoe, 2003; Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; 2002; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Markus & Schwartz, 2010; Savani, Markus, Naidu, Kumar, & Berlia, 2010; Schwartz, 2000, 2009, 2012; Schwartz, Markus, & Snibbe, 2006; Snibbe & Markus, 2005), whereas for Westerners, choices were a reflection of identity.

Choice and Well-Being: Why People Suffer

I have suggested that several factors conspire to undermine the objective benefits that ought to come with increased choice. I will review them, and in each case, I'll show why the choice problem is exacerbated for maximizers (see Schwartz, 2004, for more detailed discussion).

“Freedom,” “Choice,” “Autonomy,” and the “Self”

Virtually all of the empirical evidence on choice overload and its effects comes from contexts in which people are choosing goods. In consumer societies, the importance of contexts like these should not be dismissed. Yet, they seem to pale to insignificance when compared with decisions involving core aspects of one's identity and mode of being in the world. “What should I buy?” doesn't amount to much when compared with “What should I do with my life?” or “Who should I be?” Moreover, it is in connection with these identity-shaping decisions that the benefits of freedom and autonomy (i.e., choice) loom largest. And there is little doubt, as I have previously argued (Schwartz, 2000, 2004), that freedom of choice in these self-defining domains has expanded along with freedom of choice in the world of goods. Young people find themselves with relatively unconstrained choices when it comes to where they live, what they study, what kind of work they do, what religion they practice and how they practice it, what kind of intimate relations they will enter into, and what kind of family commitments they will make. People are free to decide matters of identity, of who they will be in the world. They are no longer stuck with identities they inherit from family and community. And having made the decision about who they are, people are also free to change it (see Gilbert & Ebert, 2002, for evidence that reversibility of decisions decreases people's satisfaction with them).

One plausible view of the modern explosion of choice is that although it does produce the negative effects I have described in the world of goods, it also produces significant positive effects with respect to the things that really matter. No longer are people “stuck” with the identities and life paths that accidents of birth, or the views of others, have imposed on them. Self-invention and reinvention are now very real possibilities. And occasional paralysis in the cereal aisle of the supermarket is a small price to pay for this kind of liberation. As I say, this is a plausible view. Nonetheless, I think, as Durkheim (1897/1951) foresaw, it is mistaken. In the admittedly speculative discussion that follows, I will try to justify this belief.

Taylor (1989, 1992a, 1992b) points out that over the past 500 years, self-understanding has been moving in a more or less straight line from “outside-in,” through participation in larger entities (the divine order, the “great chain of being,” nation, community, family, etc.) to “inside-out,” with purpose discovered from within each individual, and the notion of “authentic” self-expression as the supreme aspiration. We in the West have seen this evolution as progress, each step enhancing freedom. And like fish that don't know they live in water, we find it hard to imagine thinking about our lives in any other way. But Markus and collaborators (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991), in research on East and South Asian versus Western cultures, has shown that this movement from “outside-in” to “inside-out” is not universal: Most East and South Asians still define themselves in terms of their relations to others (and some of Markus's most recent research suggests that this “inside-out” view may be limited to the West's educated elite; see Markus & Schwartz, 2010; Schwartz, Markus, & Snibbe, 2006; Snibbe & Markus, 2005). Further, choice does not have the same significance for East or South Asians as it seems to have for Westerners (Iyengar & Devoe, 2003; Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, & Suzuki, 2004; Savani et al., 2010; see also Markus & Schwartz, 2010). This research does not challenge the notion that within Western culture more freedom—more “inside-out”—is better. But the Iyengar and Lepper (2000) “jam study” and its companions suggest that perhaps more “inside-out” is not better, and that it is not all just a matter of cultural preferences. Asians may know something that Westerners have forgotten.

Consistent with this possibility, there is good evidence from recent research on well-being—again, affirming Durkheim—that the most significant determinant of our well-being is our network of close relationships with other people (e.g., Diener, 2000; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2008; Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995; Diener, & Suh, 2001; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Lane, 2000; Myers, 2000). The more connected we are, the better off we are. The thing to notice about close relationships, in connection with freedom, choice, and autonomy, is that close relationships generally constrain, they do not liberate. When people have responsibilities for and concerns about other people, they often cannot just do anything they might otherwise choose to do. Until now, the thought has been that this constraint is perhaps just a price worth paying for rich social ties. What the choice overload research suggests is that in modern society, with overwhelming choice in every aspect of life, the constraints of close relationships with others may actually be part of the benefit of those relations rather than being a cost. And like close relationships with others, “outside-in” definitions of the self provide significant constraints on what is possible, constraints that, in modern Western societies, may be desperately needed.

What is the evidence that modern Westerners are suffering from this lack of constraint? As previously mentioned, there has been a significant rise in the incidence of clinical depression and suicide, both of which are befalling people at younger and younger ages (e.g., Angst, 1995; Eckersley, 2002; Eckersley & Dear, 2002; Klerman et al., 1985; Klerman & Weissman, 1989; Lane, 2000; Myers, 2000). Second, there is a substantial increase in the rate at which college students are flocking to counseling centers (Kadison & DiGeronimo, 2004). Third, there is a palpable unease in the reports of young college graduates, who seem to lack a clear idea of what they are meant to do in their lives (Robbins & Wilner, 2001). And finally, among upper-class adolescents whose family affluence makes anything possible, there are the same levels of drug abuse, anxiety disorder, and depression as there are in the children of the poor (Luthar & Latendresse, 2005). Further, there is reason to believe that whereas the poor take drugs “recreationally,” the rich do so to self-medicate (Luthar & Latendresse, 2005).

Conclusion: Freedom From and Freedom To

I have tried to argue that, whereas there is no denying that choice is good, it is not always and only good. Further, the relation between choice and freedom is complex. Though one cannot be free without choice, it is arguable that choice-induced paralysis is a sign of diminished rather than enhanced freedom.

Though public policy interventions can do a good deal to minimize the negative effects of choice overload (e.g., Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), it seems to me that the best route to eliminating some of the negative effects of choice overload without also eliminating the liberating effects of choice is not through public policy, but through a change in awareness, sensibility, and aspiration on the part of individuals. If people can come to see that sometimes unfettered choice is paralyzing, whereas constrained choice may be liberating, they may seek and embrace constraints in their own lives instead of avoiding them. I have suggested elsewhere that perhaps the best model we have for the importance of constraints for freedom comes from our understanding of human language abilities (Schwartz, 2000). The capacity to use language may be the single most liberating characteristic of human beings. It frees people up in significant ways from the temporal and material limitations that afflict other organisms. People can say anything about any thing, any time, or any place—even things, times, and places that have never existed. And they can be understood. So language is probably as vivid an embodiment of human freedom and autonomy as anything. But what decades of research on language ability have made clear is that the thing that makes the liberating features of language possible is that language is heavily constrained by rules. The reason people can say anything and be understood is that they cannot say anything in any way they want. It is linguistic constraint, in the form of these rules, that makes linguistic freedom possible. What I have suggested in this chapter is that exactly the same thing may be true in connection with the determination of the self. Unconstrained freedom leads to paralysis and becomes a kind of self-defeating tyranny. It is freedom of choice within significant constraints—within “rules” of some sort—that leads to well-being, to optimal functioning. And a significant task for psychology is to identify which constraints on self-determination are the crucial ones.

Summary Points

• Choice is good, but there can be too much of a good thing.
• Too many choices lead to paralysis and dissatisfaction, rather than liberation.
• The choice problem is especially acute for people who try to get the best—to maximize rather than satisfice.
• Maximizers may make better decisions than satisficers, but they feel worse about them.
• Among the impediments to satisfying decisions brought on by too much choice and maximizing are regret, the pain of missed opportunities, the creation of unrealistically high expectations, and self-blame for any decisions that fall short.
• The choice overload and maximizing problems may be a special affliction of people living in Western societies.
• Though policy initiatives can operate to minimize the negative effects of choice overload, they contain the danger that they will simultaneously undermine the positive effects of freedom of choice.
• A more promising approach may be to sensitize people to the costs of choice and the benefits of constraints. People who appreciate the benefits of constraints might seek and embrace the constraints that arise out of membership in a close social network.

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