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Burden of choice: why more options make us less happy

Christian Century, July 13, 2004 by R. Stephen Warner

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. By Barry Schwartz. HarperCollins, 288 pp., $23.95.

BARRY SCHWARTZ'S book became a page-turner for me when he began discussing a survey of preferences in medical care. The majority of nonpatients said they would want to be in charge of their treatment if they were to get cancer, he reported. But most of those who actually had cancer wanted their doctors to take over.

"What looks attractive in prospect doesn't always look so good in practice. In making a choice that could mean the difference between life and death, figuring out which choice to make becomes a grave burden," Schwartz states. Simply put, the paradox is that while having some choice is necessary and healthy, too much choice--too many options, too many decision points--is debilitating.

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Two years ago I was diagnosed with lung cancer. Absorbed in my work, active in church, a happy husband and grandfather, physically fit but for the inevitable insults of aging, I was completely unprepared when I was told that I had this dreadful disease. From the team of specialists to whom my primary-care physician referred me, I soon learned that the cancer had spread too far for a simple surgery. Having no reason to doubt the wisdom of the aggressive regimen the specialists recommended, my wife and I agreed that I would receive a combination of chemotherapy and radiation, to be followed, if all went well, by surgery and a second round of chemotherapy. Treatment began two weeks after the first hint of trouble.

By no means did we simply leave everything to the doctors. We reached out to family, fellow parishioners and friends near and far for practical aim spiritual support. We prayed and were prayed over. We stocked up on multivitamins, and I kept up my exercise. We received advice from my sister, herself a cancer survivor and volunteer counselor, and prepared questions for the doctors, showing up for appointments with notepads and a tape recorder. We talked everything over between us and made the most of each day. I joined a support group at the hospital and began to record my thoughts in an ongoing chronicle. But we did not go on the Web to research treatment options. We wanted to get on with the treatment my doctors had recommended.

In the weeks and months that followed, we received an abundance of help for which we'll always be grateful. I was especially encouraged to learn how many members of our church were, or knew of, cancer survivors. Having lost many family members to cancer, I did not need to hear about the toll this disease takes. Nor did I find it helpful to be asked if I had tried or if I knew about someone's favorite anticancer nostrum, from beverages to alternative healers. Though these suggestions were sincere and expressed a desire to help, I soon found them downright irritating.

When it comes to malting decisions about cancer treatment, I appear to be what Schwartz would call a "satisficer," one who is willing to live with the "good enough" rather than insisting on the "best." Schwartz borrowed this concept from Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, who developed it as a realistic alternative to the notion of the "utility maximizer" presupposed by classical economies. For example, if a supermarket chain attempted to calculate the very best alternative before deciding where to place a new store, the research costs would bankrupt it, while more intrepid competitors would move in. In business, "satisficing" may be good enough to yield profitable results. Research has shown that offering consumers too many flavors of jam (two dozen instead of a half dozen) depresses sales. Beyond a certain point, options are paralyzing.

A professor of psychology and social theory at Swarthmore College, Schwartz applies Simon's ideas to the human psyche, with happiness replacing profitability as the desired outcome. (An excerpt from the book, focusing on the happiness/misery calculus, appeared in the April issue of Scientific American, under the title "The Tyranny of Choice.") Schwartz and his colleagues developed a "maximization scale," by means of which subjects rate their relative maximizer/satisficer proclivities. People are asked to rate themselves on a seven-point scale from "completely agree" to "completely disagree" with such statements as, "When shopping, I have a hard time finding clothing that I really love" or "Whenever I watch TV, I channel surf." Most people cluster near the middle in such scales, but 10 percent of Schwartz's subjects were classified as extreme maximizers, those who think long and hard about every decision. They tend to make objectively better decisions than the rest of us, but they are less satisfied both with what they've chosen and with life in general. Choice, something Americans expect to exercise iii everything from TV programs to marital partners, is hardly a bad thing in itself. Schwartz cites studies of laboratory animals that are allowed to escape or prevented from escaping from unpleasant conditions. Those given no options not only languish, but develop an incapacity to respond to any improvement in their circumstances. To be deprived of all choice is to be brutalized. Yet beyond a certain point more choice means less happiness. The more choices we ponder or the more time we invest in making a certain choice, the worse we tend to feel.

Burden of choice: why more options make us less happy

Christian Century, July 13, 2004 by R. Stephen Warner

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