The Paradox of Choice Read online

  5 different styles of bottoms, each in about 5 colors (to give women a total of 875 different “make your own two-piece” possibilities).

  Shopping for Knowledge

  THESE DAYS, A TYPICAL COLLEGE CATALOG HAS MORE IN COMMON with the one from J. Crew than you might think. Most liberal arts colleges and universities now embody a view that celebrates freedom of choice above all else, and the modern university is a kind of intellectual shopping mall.

  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 traditions. 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.

  This is no longer the case. Now there is no fixed curriculum, and no single course is required of all students. There is no attempt to teach people how they should live, for who is to say what a good life is? When I went to college, thirty-five years ago, there were almost two years’ worth of general education requirements that all students had to complete. We had some choices among courses that met those requirements, but they were rather narrow. Almost every department had a single, freshman-level introductory course that prepared the student for more advanced work in the department. You could be fairly certain, if you ran into a fellow student you didn’t know, that the two of you would have at least a year’s worth of courses in common to discuss.

  Today, the modern institution of higher learning offers a wide array of different “goods” and allows, even encourages, students—the “customers”—to shop around until they find what they like. Individual customers are free to “purchase” whatever bundles of knowledge they want, and the university provides whatever its customers demand. In some rather prestigious institutions, this shopping-mall view has been carried to an extreme. In the first few weeks of classes, students sample the merchandise. They go to a class, stay ten minutes to see what the professor is like, then walk out, often in the middle of the professor’s sentence, to try another class. Students come and go in and out of classes just as browsers go in and out of stores in a mall. “You’ve got ten minutes,” the students seem to be saying, “to show me what you’ve got. So give it your best shot.”

  About twenty years ago, somewhat dismayed that their students no longer shared enough common intellectual experiences, the Harvard faculty revised its general education requirements to form a “core curriculum.” Students now take at least one course in each of seven different broad areas of inquiry. Among those areas, there are a total of about 220 courses from which to choose. “Foreign Cultures” has 32, “Historical Study” has 44, “Literature and the Arts” has 58, “Moral Reasoning” has 15, as does “Social Analysis,” Quantitative Reasoning” has 25, and “Science” has 44. What are the odds that two random students who bump into each other will have courses in common?

  At the advanced end of the curriculum, Harvard offers about 40 majors. For students with interdisciplinary interests, these can be combined into an almost endless array of joint majors. And if that doesn’t do the trick, students can create their own degree plan.

  And Harvard is not unusual. Princeton offers its students a choice of 350 courses from which to satisfy its general education requirements. Stanford, which has a larger student body, offers even more. Even at my small school, Swarthmore College, with only 1,350 students, we offer about 120 courses to meet our version of the general education requirement, from which students must select nine. And though I have mentioned only extremely selective, private institutions, don’t think that the range of choices they offer is peculiar to them. Thus, at Penn State, for example, liberal arts students can choose from over 40 majors and from hundreds of courses intended to meet general education requirements.

  There are many benefits to these expanded educational opportunities. The traditional values and traditional bodies of knowledge transmitted from teachers to students in the past were constraining and often myopic. Until very recently, important ideas reflecting the values, insights, and challenges of people from different traditions and cultures had been systematically excluded from the curriculum. The tastes and interests of the idiosyncratic students had been stifled and frustrated. In the modern university, each individual student is free to pursue almost any interest, without having to be harnessed to what his intellectual ancestors thought was worth knowing. But this freedom may come at a price. Now students are required to make choices about education that may affect them for the rest of their lives. And they are forced to make these choices at a point in their intellectual development when they may lack the resources to make them intelligently.

  Shopping for Entertainment

  BEFORE THE ADVENT OF CABLE, AMERICAN TELEVISION VIEWERS HAD the three networks from which to choose. In large cities, there were up to a half dozen additional local stations. When cable first came on the scene, its primary function was to provide better reception. Then new stations appeared, slowly at first, but more rapidly as time went on. Now there are 200 or more (my cable provider offers 270), not counting the on-demand movies we can obtain with just a phone call. If 200 options aren’t enough, there are special subscription services that allow you to watch any football game being played by a major college anywhere in the country. And who knows what the cutting-edge technology will bring us tomorrow.

  But what if, with all these choices, we find ourselves in the bind of wanting to watch two shows broadcast in the same time slot? Thanks to VCRs, that’s no longer a problem. Watch one, and tape one for later. Or, for the real enthusiasts among us, there are “picture-in-picture” TVs that allow us to watch two shows at the same time.

  And all of this is nothing compared to the major revolution in TV watching that is now at our doorstep. Those programmable, electronic boxes like TiVo enable us, in effect, to create our own TV stations. We can program those devices to find exactly the kinds of shows we want and to cut out the commercials, the promos, the lead-ins, and whatever else we find annoying. And the boxes can “learn” what we like and then “suggest” to us programs that we may not have thought of. We can now watch whatever we want whenever we want to. We don’t have to schedule our TV time. We don’t have to look at the TV page in the newspaper. Middle of the night or early in the morning—no matter when that old movie is on, it’s available to us exactly when we want it.

  So the TV experience is now the very essence of choice without boundaries. In a decade or so, when these boxes are in everybody’s home, it’s a good bet that when folks gather around the watercooler to discuss last night’s big TV events, no two of them will have watched the same shows. Like the college freshmen struggling in vain to find a shared intellectual experience, American TV viewers will be struggling to find a shared TV experience.

  But Is Expanded Choice Good or Bad?

  AMERICANS SPEND MORE TIME SHOPPING THAN THE MEMBERS OF any other society. Americans go to shopping centers about once a week, more often than they go to houses of worship, and Americans now have more shopping centers than high schools. In a recent survey, 93 percent of teenage girls surveyed said that shopping was their favorite activity. Mature women also say they like shopping, but working women say that shopping is a hassle, as do most men. When asked to rank the pleasure they get from various activities, grocery shopping ranks next to last, and other shopping fifth from the bottom. And the trend over recent years is downward. Apparently, people are shopping more now but enjoying it less.

  There is something puzzling about these findings. It’s not so odd, perhaps, that people spend more time shopping than they used to. With all the options available, picking what you want takes more effort. But why do pe
ople enjoy it less? And if they do enjoy it less, why do they keep doing it? If we don’t like shopping at the supermarket, for example, we can just get it over with, and buy what we always buy, ignoring the alternatives. Shopping in the modern supermarket demands extra effort only if we’re intent on scrutinizing every possibility and getting the best thing. And for those of us who shop in this way, increasing options should be a good thing, not a bad one.

  And this, indeed, is the standard line among social scientists who study choice. If we’re rational, they tell us, added options can only make us better off as a society. Those of us who care will benefit, and those of us who don’t care can always ignore the added options. This view seems logically compelling; but empirically, it isn’t true.

  A recent series of studies, titled “When Choice Is Demotivating,” provide the evidence. One study was set in a gourmet food store in an upscale community where, on weekends, the owners commonly set up sample tables of new items. When researchers set up a display featuring a line of exotic, high-quality jams, customers who came by could taste samples, and they were given a coupon for a dollar off if they bought a jar. In one condition of the study, 6 varieties of the jam were available for tasting. In another, 24 varieties were available. In either case, the entire set of 24 varieties was available for purchase. The large array of jams attracted more people to the table than the small array, though in both cases people tasted about the same number of jams on average. When it came to buying, however, a huge difference became evident. Thirty percent of the people exposed to the small array of jams actually bought a jar; only 3 percent of those exposed to the large array of jams did so.

  In a second study, this time in the laboratory, college students were asked to evaluate a variety of gourmet chocolates, in the guise of a marketing survey. The students were then asked which chocolate—based on description and appearance—they would choose for themselves. Then they tasted and rated that chocolate. Finally, in a different room, the students were offered a small box of the chocolates in lieu of cash as payment for their participation. For one group of students, the initial array of chocolates numbered 6, and for the other, it numbered 30. The key results of this study were that the students faced with the small array were more satisfied with their tasting than those faced with the large array. In addition, they were four times as likely to choose chocolate rather than cash as compensation for their participation.

  The authors of the study speculated about several explanations for these results. A large array of options may discourage consumers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making a decision. So consumers decide not to decide, and don’t buy the product. Or if they do, the effort that the decision requires detracts from the enjoyment derived from the results. Also, a large array of options may diminish the attractiveness of what people actually choose, the reason being that thinking about the attractions of some of the unchosen options detracts from the pleasure derived from the chosen one. I will be examining these and other possible explanations throughout the book. But for now, the puzzle we began with remains: why can’t people just ignore many or some of the options, and treat a 30-option array as if it were a 6-option array?

  There are several possible answers. First, an industry of marketers and advertisers makes products difficult or impossible to ignore. They are in our faces all the time. Second, we have a tendency to look around at what others are doing and use them as a standard of comparison. If the person sitting next to me on an airplane is using an extremely light, compact laptop computer with a large, crystal-clear screen, the choices for me as a consumer have just been expanded, whether I want them to be or not. Third, we may suffer from what economist Fred Hirsch referred to as the “tyranny of small decisions.” We say to ourselves, “Let’s go to one more store” or “Let’s look at one more catalog,” and not “Let’s go to all the stores” or “let’s look at all the catalogs.” It always seems easy to add just one more item to the array that is already being considered. So we go from 6 options to 30, one option at a time. By the time we’re done with our search, we may look back in horror at all the alternatives we’ve considered and discarded along the way.

  But what I think is most important is that people won’t ignore alternatives if they don’t realize that too many alternatives can create a problem. And our culture sanctifies freedom of choice so profoundly that the benefits of infinite options seem self-evident. When experiencing dissatisfaction or hassle on a shopping trip, consumers are likely to blame it on something else—surly salespeople, traffic jams, high prices, items out of stock—anything but the overwhelming array of options.

  Nonetheless, certain indicators pop up occasionally that signal discontent with this trend. There are now several books and magazines devoted to what is called the “voluntary simplicity” movement. Its core idea is that we have too many choices, too many decisions, too little time to do what is really important.

  Unfortunately, I’m not sure that people attracted to this movement think about “simplicity” in the same way I do. Recently I opened a magazine called Real Simple to find something of a simplicity credo. It said that “at the end of the day, we’re so caught up in doing, there’s no time to stop and think. Or to take care of our own wants and needs.” Real Simple, it is claimed, “offers actionable solutions to simplify your life, eliminate clutter, and help you focus on what you want to do, not what you have to do.” Taking care of our own “wants” and focusing on what we “want” to do does not strike me as a solution to the problem of too much choice. It is precisely so that we can, each of us, focus on our own wants that all of these choices emerged in the first place. Could readers be attracted to a magazine that offered to simplify their lives by convincing them to stop wanting many of the things they wanted? That might go a long way toward reducing the choice problem. But who would choose to buy the magazine?

  We can imagine a point at which the options would be so copious that even the world’s most ardent supporters of freedom of choice would begin to say, “enough already.” Unfortunately, that point of revulsion seems to recede endlessly into the future.

  In the next chapter, we’ll explore some of the newer areas of choice that have been added to complicate our lives. The question is, does this increased complexity bring with it increased satisfaction?

  CHAPTER TWO

  New Choices

  FILTERING OUT EXTRANEOUS INFORMATION IS ONE OF THE BASIC functions of consciousness. If everything available to our senses demanded our attention at all times, we wouldn’t be able to get through the day. Much of human progress has involved reducing the time and energy, as well as the number of processes we have to engage in and think about, for each of us to obtain the necessities of life. We moved from foraging and subsistence agriculture to the development of crafts and trade. As cultures advanced, not every individual had to focus every bit of energy, every day, on filling his belly. One could specialize in a certain skill and then trade the products of that skill for other goods. Eons later, manufacturers and merchants made life simpler still. Individuals could simply purchase food and clothing and household items, often, until very recently, at the same general store. The variety of offerings was meager, but the time spent procuring them was minimal as well.

  In the past few decades, though, that long process of simplifying and bundling economic offerings has been reversed. Increasingly, the trend moves back toward time-consuming foraging behavior, as each of us is forced to sift for ourselves through more and more options in almost every aspect of life.

  Choosing Utilities

  A GENERATION AGO, ALL UTILITIES WERE REGULATED MONOPOLIES. Consumers didn’t have to make decisions about who was going to provide telephone or electric service. Then came the breakup of “Ma Bell.” What followed in its wake was a set of options that has grown, over time, into a dizzying array. We face many different possible long-distance providers, each offering many different possible plans. We now even face choice among local tel
ephone service providers. And the advent of cell phones has given us the choice of cell phone service providers, multiplying options yet again. I get about two solicitations a week from companies that want to help me make my long-distance calls, and we are all assaulted daily with broadcast and print advertising. Phone service has become a decision to weigh and contemplate.

  The same thing has begun to happen with electric power. Companies are now competing for our business in many parts of the country. Again, we are forced to educate ourselves so that the decisions we make will be well informed.

  I am not suggesting, by the way, that deregulation and competition in the telephone and power industries are bad things. Many experts suggest that in the case of phone service, deregulation brought improved service at lower prices. With electric power, the jury is still out. In some places, the introduction of choice and competition has gone smoothly. In other places, it has been rough, with spotty service and increased prices. And most notably in California, it has been a disaster. But even if we assume that the kinks will be worked out eventually and competitive electric-power provision will benefit consumers, the fact remains that it’s another choice we have to make.

  In discussing the introduction of electric power competition in New York, Edward A. Smeloff, a utility industry expert, said, “In the past we trusted that state regulators who were appointed by our elected officials were watching out for us, which may or may not have been true. The new model is, ‘Figure it out for yourself.’” Is this good news or not? According to a survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners, a majority of people want more control over the details of their lives, but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives. There you have it—the paradox of our times.

  As evidence of this conflicted desire, it turns out that many people, though happy about the availability of telephone choices or electric choices, don’t really make them. They stick with what they already have without even investigating alternatives. Almost twenty years after phone deregulation, AT&T still has 60 percent of the market, and half of its customers pay the basic rates. Most folks don’t even shop around for calling plans within the company. And in Philadelphia, with the recent arrival of electricity competition, only an estimated 15 percent of customers shopped for better deals. You might think that there’s no harm in this, that customers are just making a sensible choice not to worry. But the problem is that state regulators aren’t there anymore to make sure consumers don’t get ripped off. In an era of deregulation, even if you keep what you’ve always had, you may end up paying substantially more for the same service.