How the Paradox of Choice is Wasting Your Time
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Our world is full of options and it’s not good
Picture this: It’s Friday night. You’re tired.
You’re not going out, because you’re tired. Also, because it’s 2020, and going out is so 2019.
You decide to make some popcorn and watch a movie.
You hop onto Netflix and peruse the movie section. You notice a few that look pretty good. But none stand out to you.
You move to Stan, without much luck.
Amazon Prime.
Disney Plus.
Apple’s streaming service.
Back to Netflix.
After investing far more time than you’d like to admit scrolling through the movie selections on each service, you give up. It’s all too hard.
You throw on a show you’ve seen several times before and use it for background ambience while you scroll social media on your phone.
Has this ever happened to you?
The above image demonstrates the Paradox of Choice.
The paradox of choice is a paradox because we assume that more choices are necessarily a good thing. If I’m a business and I offer more options to my customers, I’d anticipate better sales results. If you’re staying in on a Friday night and want to watch a movie, you’d think that having thousands of movies available through streaming services would be a convenient and helpful service.
And while having choices can be empowering, having too many choices can be a hindrance.
Hence, the paradox of choice: When a person has too many options, sometimes the easiest option is not to choose one at all.
A now-famous 2000 study used jam and chocolate to understand how choices can affect our behaviour.
Jams were set up on display for a tasting booth. One tasting booth had six different kinds of jam, while the other had twenty-four.
The extensive-choice booth attracted a higher proportion of passers-by, indicating that a booth with more choices was more novel or interesting, to begin with.
That wasn’t the case for buying, though.
For the extensive-choice booth, 3% of the consumers purchased a jar of jam. But for the limited-choice booth, almost 30% bought.
So, even though we might get excited about the idea of having loads of choices, as consumers, this can hamper our motivation to make a purchase.
In the chocolate experiment, those who had thirty chocolates to choose from experienced more initial enjoyment in the process than those who had six. However, they were also more likely to be dissatisfied or regretful with the choice they made.
The researchers state “Perhaps it is not that people are made unhappy by the decisions they make in the face of abundant options but that they are instead unsure – that they are burdened by the responsibility of distinguishing good from bad decisions.”
They suggest the paradox of choice, otherwise dubbed ‘choice overload’, could be worsened if there are negative consequences associated with a bad choice, or when one must invest significant time and effort to make educated comparisons between options.
While humans like having a sense of control over their decisions, it seems there is such a thing as having too many options. It can mean we have to spend more time evaluating, things get overwhelming, and making a decision comes with a higher risk of making the wrong one.
Analysis paralysis sets in, along with the anticipation of regret.
How many choices are too many? When do goods satiate?
In a 2018 study, participants were shown images of scenic landscapes that they could get printed on an item (like a mug). They were shown a set of either 6, 12 or 24 images to choose from. The researchers found that activity in the areas of the brain responsible for weighing up decisions and assessing value peaked for participants at 12 items. 6 was perceived as too small for that exercise, and 24 too large, as it would require a lot more evaluation for little payoff.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we need 12 choices for everything. This was a relatively small decision, which I’d imagine would have an impact. If I were shopping for a new house, my instinct would be that 12 active options would be overwhelming to try and compare. But it’s interesting to see that, at least in that study, there does seem to be a relative ‘sweet spot’ for decision making.
Like most areas of human behaviour and consumer psychology, the research is ongoing. One day we might be able to categorise any number of types of decisions and pinpoint the perfect amount of options for it.
In the meantime, how can we maximise our personal decision-making or influence with the paradox of choice in mind?
Sometimes, simplicity is best. Recall that even though a wider variety of consumer options is initially more impressive and enjoyable, at the end of the day less can be more.
If you’re in sales, you don’t want to recommend too many different options to your customer. I encourage my trainees to keep it simple: When you’ve explored their needs, try to keep your package options to 2-4.
If you’re wasting loads of time ruffling through your wardrobe to find an outfit you like, maybe it’s time for a cleanout.
If you’re a writer or solopreneur, don’t throw out too many CTA options in your content. Instead of saying “you can join my email list, or email me back, or tweet me, or message me on Instagram, or inquire through my website”, give a single, clear call to action that you want readers to take. (Mine is to join my email newsletter.)
If you’re an e-commerce store owner, perhaps check that customers can filter down their searches where possible. Make it easy in the consumer process for people to simplify.
And, if you’re looking at making an important decision, keep in mind that the more you can narrow down your options initially, the easier and likely more satisfying your choice will be.
I don’t know how to fix the Netflix problem. Maybe limiting searches by genre would help. We should all probably stop watching so much Netflix anyway. (I know I need to.)
For a long time, we’ve lived in a society where technology continued to give us more and more to choose between. Movies, music, books, podcasts, websites, online shopping sites, university degrees, online courses.
We have more choices than ever.
But recently, we seem to have started swinging the other way.
Now, simplicity seems to be becoming more popular. Mari Kondo. Minimalist wardrobes. Tiny houses. Niched down streaming services.
In a world where every decision is brimming with options, sometimes we need to streamline ourselves.
When have you experienced the paradox of choice?
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