The Paradox of Choice Page 13

  National statistics confirm the impressions captured in the book. Both men and women marry five years later now than they did a generation ago. What could create larger opportunity costs than choosing one mate and losing the chance to enjoy all the attractive features of other potential spouses? People also stay in their jobs less than half as long, on average, as they did a generation ago. Whereas delaying marriage and avoiding commitment to a particular job would seem to promote self-discovery, this freedom and self-exploration seems to leave many people feeling more lost than found. And as one young respondent put it, “What happens when you have too many options is that you are responsible for what happens to you.”

  How Can It Be So Hard to Choose?

  FOR MOST OF HUMAN HISTORY, PEOPLE WERE NOT REALLY FACED with an array of choices and opportunity costs. Instead of “Should I take A or B or C or…?” the question people asked themselves was more like “Should I take it or leave it?” In a world of scarcity, opportunities don’t present themselves in bunches, and the decisions people face are between approach and avoidance, acceptance or rejection. We can assume that having a good sense of this—of what’s good and what’s bad—was essential for survival. But distinguishing between good and bad is a far simpler matter than distinguishing good from better from best. After millions of years of survival based on simple distinctions, it may simply be that we are biologically unprepared for the number of choices we face in the modern world.

  As psychologist Susan Sugarman has pointed out, you can see this thumbnail history of our species played out in the early development of children. Babies don’t have to choose among options. They simply accept or reject what the world presents to them. The same is true of toddlers. “Do you want some juice?” “Would you like to go to the park?” “Do you want to go down the slide?” Parents ask the questions, and toddlers answer yes or no. Then, all of a sudden, perhaps when children have developed sufficient skill with language to make communication reliable, their parents are asking them, “Do you want apple juice or orange juice?” “Do you want to go to the park or to the swimming pool?” “Do you want to go down the slide or go on the swings?” Now yes or no will no longer do the job. One mother described the dilemma facing her five-year-old this way:

  I have noticed that my son sometimes has difficulty making the sorts of choices that exclude one thing or another. I have the sense that it has to do with a sense of loss. That choosing one thing over another will mean that one thing is lost. Finally making the choice somehow minimizes the pleasure in the thing that is gained, though there also seems to be an accompanying relief in finally making the choice. I have noticed him deliberating, as if he is frozen with indecision. He literally cannot make the decision, unless he is gently prodded. Most recently I noticed him doing this when given a choice between different colored popsicles.

  We all learn as we grow up that living requires making choices and passing up opportunities. But our evolutionary history makes this a difficult lesson. Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.

  Reversible Decisions: An Illusory Solution to the Choice Problem

  IS IT RETURNABLE?” “CAN I GET MY DEPOSIT BACK?” AFFIRMATIVE answers to these questions have soothed many a troubled decision maker, at least temporarily. We think of trade-offs as hurting less and opportunity costs as less troublesome, if we know that we can change our minds when it looks like we’ve made a mistake. Indeed, many of us would probably be willing to pay a premium to retain the option of being allowed to change our minds. Often we do just that by rejecting sale merchandise (“no return or exchange permitted”) and choosing items at full price. Perhaps one of the reasons major decisions are so difficult is that they are largely nonreversible. Marriage doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee. Neither does a career. Changes in either involve substantial costs—in time, energy, emotion, and money.

  So it might seem like good advice to encourage people to approach their decisions as reversible and their mistakes as fixable. The door stays open. The account stays active. Facing decisions—large or small—with this attitude should mitigate many of the stresses and negative emotions we’ve been examining.

  Yes, but at a price. A series of recent studies gave some people a choice that was reversible and others a choice that was nonreversible. In one case, participants chose one photograph from a set of eight-by-ten, black-and-white prints they had made in a photography course. In another case, they chose one small poster from a set of fine art reproductions. What emerged from the findings was that, while participants valued being able to reverse their choices, almost no one actually did so. However, those who had the option to change their minds were less satisfied with their choices than participants who did not have that option. And, perhaps most important, the participants had no idea that keeping the option open to change their minds would affect their satisfaction with the things they chose.

  So keeping options open seems to extract a psychological price. When we can change our minds, apparently we do less psychological work to justify the decision we’ve made, reinforcing the chosen alternative and disparaging the rejected ones. Perhaps we do less work putting opportunity costs of the rejected alternatives out of our minds.

  After all, if you put down a nonrefundable deposit for a house on Martha’s Vineyard, you focus on the beauty of the beach and the dunes. On the other hand, if your deposit is refundable, if the door is still open, you may continue to weigh that jungle hideaway in Costa Rica you were also considering. The beach and the dunes won’t get any better in your mind, and the rain forest won’t get any less appealing.

  Or, to raise the stakes, consider the possible difference between those who regard marital vows as sacred and unbreakable and those who regard them as agreements that can be reversed or undone by mutual consent. We would expect that those who see marriage as a nonreversible commitment will be more inclined to do psychological work that makes them feel satisfied with their decision than will those whose attitude about marriage is more relaxed. As a result, individuals with “nonreversible” marriages might be more satisfied than individuals with “reversible” ones. As we see reversible marriages come apart, we may think to ourselves, how fortunate the couple was to have a flexible attitude toward marital commitment, given that it didn’t work out. It might not occur to us that the flexible attitude might have played a causal role in the marriage’s failure.

  Choices, Opportunity Costs, and Maximizers

  NOBODY LIKES TO MAKE TRADE-OFFS. NOBODY LIKES TO WATCH opportunity costs mount. But the problem of trade-offs and opportunity costs will be dramatically attenuated for a satisficer. Recall that satisficers are looking for something that’s “good enough,” not something that’s best. “Good enough” can survive thinking about opportunity costs. In addition, the “good enough” standard likely will entail much less searching and inspection of alternatives than the maximizer’s “best” standard. With fewer alternatives under consideration, there will be fewer opportunity costs to be subtracted. Finally, a satisficer is not likely to be thinking about the hypothetical perfect world, in which options exist that contain all the things they value and trade-offs are unnecessary.

  For all these reasons, the pain of making trade-offs will be especially acute for maximizers. Indeed, I believe that one of the reasons that maximizers are less happy, less satisfied with their lives, and more depressed than satisficers is precisely because the taint of trade-offs and opportunity costs washes out much that should be satisfying about the decisions they make.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “If Only…”: The Problem of Regret

  ANYTIME YOU MAKE A DECISION AND IT DOESN’T TURN OUT WELL or you find an alternative that would have turned out better, you’re a candidate for regret.

  Several months ago my wife and I ordered a high-tech, great-for the-back desk chair in an on-line auction on eBay. The chair never a
ppeared, the seller was a fraud, and we (along with several others) lost a tidy sum of money. “How could we have been so stupid?” my wife and I have taken turns saying to each other. Do we regret having been taken? Indeed we do.

  This is postdecision regret, regret that occurs after we’ve experienced the results of a decision. But there is also something called anticipated regret, which rears its head even before a decision is made. How will it feel to buy this sweater only to find a nicer, cheaper one in the next store? How will it feel if I take this job only to have a better opportunity appear next week?

  Postdecision regret is sometimes referred to as “buyer’s remorse.” After a purchasing decision, we start to have second thoughts, convincing ourselves that rejected alternatives were actually better than the one we chose, or imagining that there are better alternatives out there that we haven’t yet explored. The bitter taste of regret detracts from the satisfaction we get, whether or not the regret is justified. Anticipated regret is in many ways worse, because it will produce not just dissatisfaction but paralysis. If someone asks herself how it would feel to buy this house only to discover a better one next week, she probably won’t buy this house.

  Both types of regret—anticipated and postdecision—will raise the emotional stakes of decisions. Anticipated regret will make decisions harder to make, and postdecision regret will make them harder to enjoy.

  Individuals are not all equally susceptible to regret. Recall that when my colleagues and I measured individual differences in regret, we found that people with high regret scores are less happy, less satisfied with life, less optimistic, and more depressed than those with low regret scores. We also found that people with high regret scores tend to be maximizers. Indeed, we think that concern about regret is a major reason that individuals are maximizers. The only way to be sure that you won’t regret a decision is by making the best possible decision. So regret doesn’t seem to serve people well psychologically. 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. Which may be a major reason why adding choices to our lives doesn’t always make us better off.

  Even though there are differences among individuals in sensitivity to regret, some circumstances are more likely to trigger regret than others.

  Omission Bias

  ONE STUDY OF REGRET HAD PARTICIPANTS READ THE FOLLOWING:

  Mr. Paul owns shares in Company A. During the past year he considered switching to stock in Company B, but he decided against it. He now finds out that he would have been better off by $1,200 if he had switched to the stock of Company B. Mr. George owned shares in Company B. During the past year he switched to stock in Company A. He now finds that he would have been better off by $1,200 if he had kept his stock in Company B. Who feels greater regret?

  Because both Mr. Paul and Mr. George own shares of Company A and because they would both have been $1,200 richer if they had owned shares in Company B, they seem to be in exactly the same boat. But 92 percent of the respondents think Mr. George will feel worse than Mr. Paul. The key difference between them is that Mr. George regrets something he did (switching from Company B to Company A), while Mr. Paul regrets something he failed to do. Most of us seem to share the intuition that we regret actions that don’t turn out well more than we regret failures to take actions that would have turned out well. This is sometimes referred to as an omission bias, a bias to downplay omissions (failures to act) when we evaluate the consequences of our decisions.

  However, recent evidence indicates that acts of commission are not always more salient than acts of omission. The omission bias undergoes a reversal with respect to decisions made in the more distant past. When asked about what they regret most in the last six months, people tend to identify actions that didn’t meet expectations. But when asked about what they regret most when they look back on their lives as a whole, people tend to identify failures to act. In the short run, we regret a bad educational choice, whereas in the long run, we regret a missed educational opportunity. In the short run, we regret a broken romance, whereas in the long run, we regret a missed romantic opportunity. So it seems that we don’t close the psychological door on the decisions we’ve made, and as time passes, what we’ve failed to do looms larger and larger.

  Near Misses

  A SECOND FACTOR THAT AFFECTS REGRET IS HOW CLOSE WE COME TO achieving our desired result. Consider this:

  Mr. Crane and Mr. Tees were scheduled to leave the airport on different flights, at the same time. They traveled from town in the same limousine, were caught in a traffic jam, and arrived at the airport thirty minutes after the scheduled departure time of their flights. Mr. Crane is told that his flight left on time. Mr. Tees is told that his flight was delayed and left just five minutes ago. Who is more upset?

  When presented with this scenario, 96 percent of respondents thought Mr. Tees would be more upset than Mr. Crane. You can almost feel the frustration that Mr. Tees experiences. “If only that other passenger had gotten to the limo on time.” “If only we had used Main Street instead of Elm Street.” “If only I had been the first passenger dropped off at the airport instead of the third.” There are so many ways to imagine a different outcome. 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.

  Related to this “nearness” effect, who do you think is happier, an athlete who wins a silver medal in the Olympics (second place) or an athlete who wins a bronze medal (third place)? It seems obvious that second is better than third, so silver medalists should be happier than bronze medalists. But this turns out, on average, not to be true. Bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists. As the silver medalists stand on the award platform, they’re thinking about how close they came to winning the gold. Just a little more of this, and a little less of that, and ultimate glory would have been theirs. As the bronze medalists stand on that platform, however, they’re thinking about how close they came to getting no medal at all. The near miss of the silver medalists is triumph, whereas the near miss of the bronze medalists is also-ran obscurity.

  Responsibility for Results

  THE LAST IMPORTANT DETERMINANT OF REGRET IS RESPONSIBILITY. If a friend invites you out to dinner at a restaurant of his choosing and you have a bad meal, you might be disappointed. You might be displeased. But will you be regretful? What is it that you’ll regret? Contrast that with how you’ll feel after a bad meal if you picked the restaurant. This is when you’ll feel regret. Several studies have shown that bad results make people equally unhappy whether or not they are responsible for them. But bad results make people regretful only if they bear responsibility.

  If we put these factors together, we get a picture of the conditions that make regret especially powerful. If we are responsible for an action that turns out badly and if it almost turned out well, then we are prime candidates for regret. What is important about this picture is that the more that our experiences result from our own choices, the more regret we will feel if things don’t turn out as we had hoped. So although adding options may make it easier for us to choose something we really like, it will also make it easier for us to regret choices that don’t live up to our hopes or expectations.

  Regret and the World of Counterfactuals and Hypotheticals

  AND WHAT MAKES THE PROBLEM OF REGRET MUCH WORSE IS THAT such thinking is not restricted to objective reality. The power of the human imagination enables people to think about states of affairs that don’t exist. When confronted with a choice between a job that offers the possibility of rapid advancement and a job that offers congenial workmates, I can easily imagine finding a job that has both. This ability to conjure up ideal scenarios provides a never-ending supply of raw material for experiencing regret.

  Thinking about the world as it isn’t, but might be or might have been, is called counterfactual thinking. The limo to the airport went on Elm Stree
t. That’s a fact. It could have gone on Main Street. That’s contrary to fact. “If only it had gone on Main Street, I would have made my plane.” The elective course I took was a bore. The one I passed up was interesting. Those are the facts. “If only I had been willing to wake up a little earlier.” “If only it had been scheduled a little later.” Thoughts like these invoke circumstances that are contrary to fact.

  We couldn’t make it through the day without counterfactual thinking. Without the ability to imagine a world that is different from our actual world and then to act to bring this imagined world into being, we never would have survived as a species, much less advanced through the millions of stages of speculation and trial and error that is the history of human progress. But the downside of counterfactual thinking is that it fuels regret, both postdecision regret and anticipated regret.

  Psychologists who have studied counterfactual thinking extensively find that most individuals do not often engage in this process spontaneously. We don’t sit around, sipping our morning coffee, and ask ourselves what our lives would have been like if we’d been born in South Africa rather than the U.S., or if the earth’s orbit had been just a few thousand miles closer to the sun. Instead, counterfactual thinking is usually triggered by the occurrence of something unpleasant, something that itself produces a negative emotion. Counterfactual thoughts are generated in response to experiences such as poor exam grades, trouble in romantic relationships, and the illness or death of loved ones. And when the counterfactual thoughts begin to occur, they trigger more negative emotions, like regret, which in turn trigger more counterfactual thinking, which in turn triggers more negative emotion. Though most people can manage to suppress their counterfactual thoughts before they spin too far down this vicious spiral, some—especially those who suffer from clinical depression—may not be able to arrest the downward pull.