Thanks to a commenter on my post about the positive side of fascism, I found a really fascinating article by Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, called The Tyranny of Choice. The article seems written to promote his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
In this article, Schwartz goes to some lengths to explain how a multitude of choices don’t actually create freedom, but create greater dissatisfaction and an inability to choose decisively. He stops short of saying that this situation was intentionally created by anyone, of course, as he seems to be posing as a legitimate thinker, and not a conspiracy theorist. But I can’t help but see the outlines of the situation he describes as part of a larger very purposeful technocratic agenda. Also worth noting is that his article appears on a very progressive and interesting Catholic website called Godspy. It would seem that his opposition to excessive choice fits very snugly into more conservative religious traditions who have been saying the same thing for years.
In any event, the article as a whole is absolutely worth reading, but let me drop in some of his figures that he cites in order to whet your appetite:
* Shoppers who confront a display of 30 jams or varieties of gourmet chocolate are less likely to purchase any than when they encounter a display of six.
* Students given 30 topics from which to choose to write an extra-credit essay are less likely to write one than those given six. And if they do write one, it tends to be of lower quality.
* The majority of medical patients do not want the decision authority that the canons of medical ethics have thrust upon them. Responsibility for medical decisions looks better to people in prospect than in actuality: Sixty-five percent of respondents say that if they were to get cancer, they would want to be in charge of treatment decisions, but among those who actually have cancer, only 12 percent want that control and responsibility.
* The more funds employers offer their employees in 401(k) retirement plans, the less likely the employees are to invest in any, even though in many cases, failing to do so costs them employer-matching funds of up to several thousand dollars a year.
* When maximizers, as opposed to satisficers, go shopping for big items or small ones, they spend more time looking, have a harder time deciding, look around more at what others are buying, and are less satisfied with their purchases.
* Maximizing college seniors send out more résumés, investigate more different fields, go on more job interviews, and get better, higher-paying jobs than satisficers. But they are less satisfied with the jobs, and are much more stressed, anxious, frustrated, and unhappy with the process.
Very interesting stuff. Also interesting to note though is that his viewpoint on this matter is clothed in purely scientific research-based imagery, as opposed to the religious tone of the site as a whole. Schwartz himself is an “expert” and perhaps his work represents just one of several thrusts operational inside of a technocratic scientific system of managing people. You have one side of the game which is aiming to destabilize people by offering them too many choices, while you have another group running counter to that who seeks to “liberate” people by removing this “tyranny” of choices once again - perhaps at some point in the future. Who knows.
Also very interesting to look at how towards the end of the article, he points out that people who are more strongly connected socially are more “happy.”
If enhanced freedom of choice and increased affluence don’t enhance well-being, what does? The most important factor seems to be close social relations. People who are married, who have good friends, and who are close to their families are happier than those who are not. People who participate in religious communities are happier than those who do not. Being connected to others seems to be more important to well-being than being rich or “keeping your options open.”
In the context of this discussion of choice, it is important to note that, in many ways, social ties actually decrease freedom of choice. Marriage, for example, is a commitment to a particular other person that curtails freedom of choice of sexual or emotional partners. Serious friendship also entails weighty responsibilities and obligations that at times may limit one’s own freedom. The same is true, obviously, of family. And most religious institutions call on their members to live their lives in a certain way, and to take responsibility for the well-being of their fellow congregants. So, counterintuitive as it may appear, what seems to contribute most to happiness binds us rather than liberates us.
Much to think about in this article. And I think he may have just convinced me to make the choice of getting hold of his book. Good for him. Did he just disprove his point?
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8 Comments
On principle I am against generalisations of this kind, but the greater happiness of diminished choice is one I have long noticed and it is basic to the Catholic religion which has always cherished a strand of blind obedience.
Having just posted on my own blog a memoir up to age 10, I was struck by childhood’s lack of choice. Parents call the shots till the adolescent breaks free. Whether the greater freedom to choose brings later happiness seems to depend on the degree of self-love and hence confidence that the child’s upbringing has brought about so far.
Somewhat tangential perhaps, but this is at the foundation of my criticism of Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning as an accurate portrayal of the existential dilemna.
Allow me to quote Irvin Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy, when he introduces the “Four Ultimate Concerns” being Death, Freedom, Isolation, and Meaninglessness. Here he speaks of Freedom:
The first half of Frankl’s Meaning describes his observations while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. The second half is an analysis of those observations, with the aim of understanding how humans derive meaning despite living in the most harrowing and dejected of conditions.
But, since Freedom, and its attendant anxiety, are fundamental existential issues, I believe that a concentration camp makes a poor laboratory for studying the human response to the existential predicament - simply because a concentration camp restricts freedom and choice, thereby dampening the effect of these factors.
This man needs to go chocolate shopping with me. When given over 30 choices, such as in a Godiva shop, I always buy more than if I was given fewer choices.
I want to see the research on this sweeping generalization. Especially since gourmet chocolate shops are always packed with people buying, not just browsing.
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.
There is a way out. In fact you’ve hit the nail on the head, Tim, when you fleetingly ask whether Schwartz disproves his own point by you getting the book.
Tonight as you know, I inherited a grip of old newspapers (unfortunately not going back as far as I was hoping — but going far back enough). Let me tell you this: The naivete factor was and is rife in the trash strata of what we term our “past” or “history”. I’m thinking that the only way for social control to continue as it has, whilst maintaining the appearance of “consumer choice” is to have some authority behind the “data clouds” which follow us and our disembodied numbers around. This authority has chosen to instead of leaving well enough alone, to amphetaminatically amp up the amount of unknown, untested technologies to do what it must until the glorious DAY ahead dawns.
It’s all in the statistics my dear Watson. Actually, more to the point, it’s all in the ill understood data clouds my even more dear, dear Job.
Looking at these old newspapers proves to me this: it is clear there has always been unhindered uber octane bullshit ever since well, bullshit came into existence. But the one thing there never was, was the bandwidth to carry such things to such extremes as there is now. In other words, you can see not only in the newspapers of old, but the wired cyber-democracy of today, that there is one function and one function alone of information — and that is to obliterate finally the human soul. Because there is no need for this information other than the upkeep of appearances for the empire, one wonders how much longer this needlessness, this trembling need for the Empire to be noticed as the only game in town must go on. Stick a finger out into the contemporary air and discern for yourself which way the wind is blowing.
My thought is this concerning “choice” or too many of them: We’ve been utterly undermined and destroyed already. Not by choice. But by our moth to a flame propensity to gather round choices already self-contained within their projected outcomes — preordained outcomes at least going back thirty, fifty years and easily more. The sky’s the limit if you can make people believe they are free when in their hearts they “know” they are not. Free to worship, free to travel (Ha!) and free to excercise what power they have over the “almighty dollar”. Ah freedom. Reminds me of South Park. Or as I call it “Soul-Sap Park”. Free to be irreverant. Can’t forget that.
Choices become dangerous and criminal when you discard the emotional human needs in interest of the ego’s growth –the ego is nothing more than the empire naked. Therefore, because nobody as of now can see past this because it is all so new and will continue to be ever more new for generations to come, our choices are corralled into ever advancing technological improvements . “Choice” is nothing more than illusion. As our biological bodies become more matched with what our disembodied data says via more exacting algorithms and a little fear based hatred thrown in we’ll be making all kinds of choices in no time. None of them will we want, but a plethora will we be presented with.
I personally want pepperoni on my tombstone.
One needs to be careful in reading statements like “Group A are more likely to do/be X then Group B”. This may be true averaging over A and B, but an important question is whether there are subgroups for which the opposite is true. (See Simpson’s paradox.)
For many, restriction in freedom might lead to greater satisfaction, but there might be important subgroups of people for which the opposite is true. For example, when my partner was confronting treatment options for oral cancer, many of his doctors counseled him to have his jaw removed. That was the wrong thing to do for his needs, and he unilaterally decided against it. As it turns out, with just chemo and very directed radiation, he has had several additional years of high quality-of-life, being able to move about socially with no obvious external physical evidence of his condition, and currently no signs of advancement of the cancer. Obviously, this is just an anecdote, not a systematic study, but it illustrates the point.
Beautiful quote:
JK is right: I don’t think it’s the quantity of choices that matters, but rather the quality. Of course we’ll be paralyzed if all of our choices are uniformly shit, just packaged differently.
I have come to believe that the only way out of this hell is the Rumsfeldian “unknown unknown”. Who knows if it will happen in our lifetimes?
Hey, heres a link to an article in the guardian thats seems to link quite well with what you’ve written:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher...h/improbable/story/0,,1858809,00.html
From The Page:
“Dijksterhuis asked his test subjects to choose between four hypothetical cars on the basis of a set of specifications (whether the car had a sunroof, low mileage, etc) that could be either simple (only four specifications) or complex (12 specifications). One group was given four minutes to consider the problem; the other group was shown the specification and then immediately distracted by another task. Surprisingly, the subjects with plenty of time to think fared better when faced with a simple decision (four specifications) but worse when the problem was more complex (12 specifications).”
Hissuregnosis, that’s an interesting article. What do you suppose they mean by, “…the subjects with plenty of time to think fared better” (italics mine)? What constitutes faring well, or poorly, in this study? The article doesn’t say.