THE gravity of the problem hit me in a bar in New Mexico. On offer were no
fewer than 24 beers, all described in glowing terms, all bewilderingly
unfamiliar.
So there I was, fresh from the annual meeting of the Society for Judgment and
Decision Making, and behaving like Buridan鈥檚 Ass鈥攖he imaginary creature
which starved midway between two troughs of hay because it couldn鈥檛 decide which
to go for. Then, a reprieve. At the bottom of the menu was an invitation to try
a 鈥渟ampler tray鈥濃��24 whisky glasses, each with a splash of one of the
beers. Perfect. But as I worked through them, tension mounted. Which would I
choose for the next round?
Everywhere you look, choice is on the increase and getting more complex. We
spend hours surveying ever-expanding ranges of pensions, mortgages and mobile
phones, fearful that if we don鈥檛 make the effort we will live to regret it. And
worst of all, this form of low-grade torture is, according to the politicians,
supposed to make us happy.
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What the politicians overlook, however, is that with increasing choice comes
an increase in the number of potentially alluring options that must be
forsaken鈥攁nd no-one wants to forsake alluring things. Take people with
cable TV who spend all evening channel-hopping. Having more choice hasn鈥檛 made
them content, it鈥檚 made them frightened that they might be missing
something.
Clearly, we need help. We need to be taught at a young age how to narrow the
options down rationally, eliminating those we are prepared to forgo. That way
we鈥檙e bound to end up choosing the products whose qualities we like best. Aren鈥檛
we?
Sadly, it鈥檚 not that simple鈥攁s Princeton University psychologist Eldar
Shafir discovered when he offered people pairs of options. One of each pair
always had both good and bad points, for example an ice cream with a delicious
flavour and lots of cholesterol (call it X). The other option was always
middling on all measures鈥攁 pleasant though unspectacular ice cream lower
in cholesterol (Y). When asked which one they preferred, most people selected X,
they seemed to focus on the flavour. Bizarrely, however, people also nominated X
when asked which ice cream they didn鈥檛 want.
The upshot? Although you might think that asking what you want should be the
flip-side of asking what you don鈥檛 want, it isn鈥檛. When you reject something you
focus more on the negative features; when you select something you鈥檙e focusing
on the positive. So, whether it鈥檚 an ice cream or a prospective employee,
deciding what (or who) you want by a process of rational elimination may not
actually give you what you want. There is no simple panacea to ease the pain of
choice other than passing the buck, of course (hence the irksome clich茅:
鈥淣o, you decide鈥�).
As for you sadistic purveyors of all this choice, don鈥檛 get too smug. When
Sheena Sethi-Iyengar, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set up a
tasting counter for exotic jams in a grocery, she found that too much choice can
be bad for business. More customers stopped to sample from a 24-jam counter than
from a 6-jam counter. But only 3 per cent bought any jam when 24 were on offer,
compared with 30 per cent when there were 6 to choose from. So what happened in
New Mexico?
Easy鈥擨 ordered another sampler tray of 24 beers. Bottoms up!