Book Notes: “The Paradox of Choice”
Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy. — Louis C.K.
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz explores why people are so unhappy during a time of seemingly infinite choice. He splits the book into four parts:
- When We Choose
- How We Choose
- Why We Suffer
- What We Can Do
I have been making an effort to read more. A problem I have is I will really enjoy a book, take notes or highlight passages, then forget all the great insights or lessons a week later. These notes are here to help me remember key learning points. Additionally, by reviewing my notes and thinking about them some time after I’m done reading, I hope it will help me take these ideas and insights and formulate actionable steps to improve my life.
Key Takeaway
I recently finished reading The Power of Habit and I’m currently reading How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. A key lesson I’ve taken away from these books is to be aware of our cognitive biases.
The easiest person to fool is ourself. After reading this book, you’ll see that our choices and the decision making process are not as straightforward as you think. Also, how we feel about our choices —how content or disappointed we are—afterwards is also affected by these biases and how we rationalize our choices.
When We Choose
Habits and routine help preserve the limited willpower and decision making reservoir we have:
Each and every part of this boring morning ritual is a matter of choice. You don’t have to brush your teeth; you don’t have to take a shower. When you dress, you don’t have to wear underwear. So even before your eyes are more than half open —long before you’ve had your first cup of coffee—you’ve made a dozen choices or more. But they don’t count, really, as choices. You could have done otherwise, but you never gave it a thought. So deeply ingrained, so habitual, so automatic, are these morning activities that you don’t really contemplate the alternatives. So though it is logically true that you could have done otherwise, there is little psychological reality to this freedom of choice. On the weekend, perhaps, things are different. You might lie in bed asking whether you’ll bother to shower now or wait till later. You might consider passing up your morning routine shave as well. But during the week, you’re an automaton.
This is a very good thing. The burden of having every activity be a matter of deliberate and conscious choice would be too much for any of us to bear.
How We Choose
We may not actually know what we want:
Thus, you might, in retrospect, remember a one-week vacation that had some great moments and finished with a bang as more pleasurable than a three-week vacation that also had some great moments, but finished only with a whimper.[…]
The discrepancy between logic and memory suggests that we don’t always know what we want.
Availability heuristic:
The availability heuristic says that we assume that the more available some piece of information is to memory, the more frequently we must have encountered it in the past.[…] In general, the frequency of experience is not the only thing that affects availability to memory. Salience or vividness matters as well. Because starting letters of words are much more salient than third letters, they are much more useful as cues for retrieving words from memory. So it’s the salience of starting letters that makes t-words come easily to mind, while people mistakenly think it’s the frequency of starting letters that makes them come easily to mind. In addition to affecting the ease with which we retrieve information from memory, salience or vividness will influence the weight we give any particular piece of information.
Other examples of availability heuristic: we put more weight from a personal review of a product than a review from a publication which may cover a broader population.
When you hear the same story everywhere you look and listen, you assume it must be true. And the more people believe it’s true, the more likely they are to repeat it, and thus the more likely you are to hear it. This is how inaccurate information can create a bandwagon effect, leading quickly to a broad, but mistaken, consensus.
Frames and prospects:
And, as prospect theory tells us, because losses are more bad than gains are good, the mug or pen which you have been “endowed” is worth more to you than it is to a potential trading parter. And “losing” (giving up) the pen will hurt worse than “gaining” (trading for) the mug will give pleasure.
Information Gathering in a World With Too Many Options:
Thus the growth of options and opportunities for choice has three, related, unfortunate effects.
- It means that decisions require more effort.
- It makes mistakes more likely.
- It makes the psychological consequences of mistakes more severe.
When Only the Best Will Do:
To a maximizer, satisfiers appear to be willing to settle for mediocrity, but that is not the case. A satisfier may be just as discriminating as a maximizer. The difference between the two types is that the satisfier is content with the merely excellent as opposed to the absolute best.
Maximizing and the Quality of Decisions:
So while objective experience clearly matters, subjective experience has a great deal to do with the quality of that objective experience. […]
But remember, I’m not saying that satisfiers do not have standards. Satisfiers may have very high standards. It’s just that they allow themselves to be satisfied once experiences meet those standards.
Maximizing and Perfectionism:
While maximizers and perfectionists both have very high standards, I think that perfectionists have very high standards that they don’t expect to meet, whereas maximizers have very high standards that they do expect to meet.
Which may explain why we found that those who score high on perfectionism, unlike maximizers, are not depressed, regretful, or unhappy.
Just because you are a maximizer, it does not necessarily mean you are a maximizer in all aspects:
The truth is that maximizing and satisfying orientations tend to be “domain specific”. Nobody is maximizing in every decision, and probably everybody is in some.
Why We Suffer
The Point of Choice:
To avoid the escalation of such burdens, we must learn to be selective in exercising our choices. We must decide, individually, when choice really matters and focus our energies there, even if it means letting many other opportunities pass us by.
Second-Order Decisions: make decisions about when to make decisions (a way of easing the burden that freedom of choice imposes).
Rules (e.g. always wearing your seatbelt)
… following rules eliminates troublesome choices in your daily life, each time you
Presumptions
… are less stringent than rules. Presumptions are like the default setting on computer applications. … 99.9 percent of the time, my decision is made for me.
Standards
… are even less rigorous than rules or presumptions. When we establish standards, we are essentially dividing the world of options into two categories: options that meet the standard and options that don’t. Then, when we have to make a choice, we need only investigate the options within category number one.
So by using rules, presumptions, standards, and tour tine to constrain ourselves and limit the decisions we face, we can make life more manageable, which gives us more time to devote ourselves to other people and to the decisions that we can’t or don’t want to avoid.
Opportunity Cost and Avoiding Decisions:
When people are presented with options involving trade-offs that create conflict, all choices begin to look unappealing.
Scenario: you are serving on a jury of an only-child sole custody case. People were asked to select which parent, Parent A or Parent B, to award custody based solely on a few observations. Respondents answered differently based on the question they were asked. One group was asked to select which parent to award sole custody and the other group was asked to select which parent to deny sole custody
Difficult choices like this one set people off on a chase for reasons to justify their decisions.
Reversible Decisions: An Illusory Solution to the Choice Problem
… keeping options open seems to extract a psychological price.
Postdecision regret:
And once again, the more options you have, the more likely it is that you will experience regret, either in anticipation of decisions or after them.
Near misses:
When you miss your objective by a lot, it is hard to imagine that small differences would have led to a successful result. But when you miss by a little, ouch.
An example he gives is missing your flight by an hour versus arriving at the gate just minutes after the doors were closed. You start to wonder: what if the taxi driver had picked me up just a second earlier? Or taken a different route? Then you also start to think how those smaller decisions affected you: if the taxi hadn’t slowed down at that one light, then the rest of the route would have been clear. It’s an assumption we make, but we don’t really know that things would have worked out for the better.
Another example he gives is the happiness of Olympic silver medalists versus bronze medalists. We would think silver medalists would be happier than bronze medalists (they came in second), but bronze medalists were generally happier when interviewed later. Why? Silver medalists just missed a gold medal. Bronze medalists were happy to be on the podium.
There is also an important distinction to be made between “upward” and “downward” counterfactuals. Upward counterfactuals are imagined states that are better than what actually happened and downward counterfactuals are imagined states that are worse. The Olympic silver medalist who imagines tripping, falling, and not finishing the race at all is engaging id downward counterfactual thinking, and doing so should unhand her feelings about winning silver. It’s only the upward counterfactual—imagining winning the gold—that will diminish her sense of achievement. […] What studies have shown, however, is that people rarely produce downward counterfactuals unless asked specifically to do so.
There is an important lesson to be taken from this research on counterfactual thinking, and it’s not that we should stop doing it; counterfactual thinking is a powerful intellectual tool. The lesson is that we should try to do more downward counterfactual thinking.
Regret Aversion:
Studies like this show that not only is regret an important consequence of many decisions, but that the prospect of regret is an important cause of many decisions. […]
Another effect that the desire to avoid regret can have is to induce people not to act at all, what is called inaction inertia.
An example of how regret aversion can affect our decision making:
Having failed to sign up for a frequent-flyer program and then made a 5,000-mile roundtrip flight, we are reluctant to sign up when given the opportunity again. If we do sign up, we can no longer tell ourselves that we don’t fly enough and it isn’t worth the trouble; instead, we can only regret not having signed up earlier.
Regret and sunk costs:
This is thinking in terms of the past, not the future
Why Decisions Disappoint: The Problem of Adaptation
Factoring in adaptation to the decision-making process may make differences that seem large at the moment of choice feel much smaller. Factoring in adaptation may help us be satisfied with choices that are good enough rather than “the best”, and this in turn will reduce the time and effort we devote to making choices. […] But individuals who regularly experience and express gratitude are physically healthier, more optimistic about the future, and feel better about their lives than those who do not. […]
And unlike adaptation, the experience of gratitude is something we can affect directly. Experiencing and expressing gratitude actually get easier with practice.
Why Everything Suffers in Comparison:
When people evaluate an experience, they perform the following comparisons:
- Comparing the experience to what they hoped it would be
- Comparing the experience to what they expected it to be
- Comparing the experience to other experiences they have had in the recent past
- Comparing the experience to experiences that others have had
Barry Schwartz goes through an example discussing comparing an experience at a restaurant:
And by and large, we are unlikely to realize that our evaluations are as much a commentary on what we bring to the meal as they are on the meal itself.
The Curse of High Expectations:
The challenge is to find a way to keep expectations modest, even as actual experiences keep getting better.
One way of achieving this goal is by keeping wonderful experiences rare. […] What’s the point of great meals, great wines, and great blouses if they don’t make you feel great?
Status, Social Comparison, and Choice:
This essentially universal and unrealistically high standard of comparison decreases the satisfaction of those of use who are in the middle, or below, even as the actual circumstances of our lives improve.
With the social media we have today, we have constant access and reminders of people who “have it better”. So, even though we may be doing well, we are not satisfied because we constantly compare ourselves with others. We need to keep in mind that what people share online is only a glimpse into their actual lives. For example, we probably know someone who isn’t doing great financially but posts pictures of themselves with expensive new clothes or shoes.
Positional Comparison:
It’s like being in a crowded football stadium, watching the crucial play. A spectator several rows in front stands up to get a better view, and a chain reaction follows. Soon everyone is standing, just to be able to see as well as before. Everyone is on their feet rather than sitting, but no one’s position has improved. […] When people pursue goods that are positional, they can’t help being in the rat race.
Who’s Fault Is It? Choice, Disappointment, and Depression:
The different reactions of the two groups caused researchers to conclude that it is not the dancing toy animals that are an endless source of delight for infant, but rather having control. Infants kept smiling and cooing at the display because they seemed to know that they made it happen. “I did this. Isn’t it great. And I can do it again whenever I want.” The other infants, those who got the display for “free”, did not have this exhilarating experience of control.
Emphasis on freedom of choice, together with the proliferation of possibilities that modern life affords, has, I believe, contributed to these unrealistic expectations.
What We Can Do
In this section of the book, Barry Schwartz gives us actions we can do. He presents 11 to address all the problems that choice give us that he presented in the book. Rather than list them all here, I’ve just selected the ones where I highlighted notes.
Choose when to choose
To manage the problem of excessive choice, we must decide which choices in our lives really matter and focus our time and energy there, letting many other opportunities pass us by. But by restricting our options, we will be able to choose less and feel better.
Make your decisions nonreversible
Knowing that you’ve made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have rather than constantly second-guessing it.
Regret less
It also pays to remember just how complex life is and to realize how rare it is that any single decision, in and of itself, has the life transforming power we something think.
Learn to love constraints
As the number of choices we face increases, freedom of choice eventually becomes a tyranny of choice. Routine decisions take so much time and attention that it becomes difficult to get through the day.
Q&A
In a hurried world that forces you to make decision after decision, each involving almost unlimited options, it’s hard to find the time. You may not always be conscious of this, but your efforts to get the best car will interfere with our desire to be a good friend. Your effort to get the best job will intrude on your duty to be the best parent.
Other Random Passages
These didn’t quite fit with certain themes of the other notes, but I just like them as a “nice to know”:
A century ago, a college curriculum entailed a largely fixed course of study, with a principal goal of educating people in their ethical and civic tradition. Education was not just about learning a discipline —it was a way of raising citizens with common values and aspirations. Often the capstone of a college education was a course taught by the college president, a course that integrated the various fields of knowledge to which the students had been exposed. But more important, this course was intended to teach students how to use their college education to live a good and an ethical life, both as individuals and as members of society.
Apparently we always think we want choice, but when we actually get it, we may not like it.
… this suggests that whenever we are forced to make decisions involving trade-offs, we will feel less good about the option we choose than we would have if the alternatives hadn’t been there.
Even decisions as trivial as renting a video become important if we believe that these decisions are revealing something significants about ourselves.