Author: Barry Schwartz
_Barry Schwartz_
Reading time: 23 minutes
Synopsis
Many people think that having lots of choices is a good thing. They believe more options mean there is something for everyone. They also think it makes everyone happy. But in his book Anleitung zur Unzufriedenheit (The Paradox of Choice), psychologist Barry Schwartz shows this is not true. He says that too many choices can make it hard for us to decide. This can make us less happy overall. He uses many examples and studies to show that sometimes, less is more.
What you will learn: How to find your way in a world with too many choices.
In our modern society, we see countless offers and choices every day. This includes everything from the clothes we wear to what we eat for lunch. Having choices makes us feel free. We feel like we can become who we want to be. At least, this is the story we often believe.
Anleitung zur Unzufriedenheit says the opposite. It claims that too many choices make us stressed and unhappy. It makes it very hard for us to choose anything at all.
In these summaries, you will see how and why too many choices make choosing less fun. You will learn why less can sometimes be more. You will also learn how to avoid the bad effects of having too many options. To do this, you can make your own rules for choosing. You will also get tips on how to make decisions easier and become happier overall.
You will also learn in these summaries,
- why your new laptop will only make you happy for a short time,
- why Camus chose between coffee and death, and
- how too many choices can lead to sadness (depression).
Blink 1 – Every year, we have more decisions to make.
Only a few decades ago, people had far fewer choices. This was true in almost every part of life.
Only one company provided electricity. Another handled phone lines. A third supplied water. If you wanted to study, often there was only one university near you. And only one subject might be an option. Today, just a few generations later, we have forgotten about these single providers. People have more choices now than ever before.
We don’t just see many companies selling things. Who hasn’t looked at websites to compare electricity or internet plans? We also see a huge number of choices from each company.
For example, Swarthmore College is a small university in Pennsylvania. It offers its 1,500 students 120 different courses for general studies. But students only need to choose nine. In the US, and now also in Europe, such a huge number of choices is common. This is because all students can follow their interests freely.
This is not just about electricity or education. It shows a trend we see everywhere in our daily lives. Wherever we look, modern society gives us too many choices. Should we save money for retirement privately? If yes, which plan is best? Is it smart to get extra insurance too? Is it still worth saving for a house today? Who offers the best deal? All these questions need answers. They make our lives harder.
Blink 2 – The more options we have, the harder it is to choose.
“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” The French writer Albert Camus asked this unusual question. He wanted to show that everything in life is a choice.
Every second of our lives, we make choices. And there are always other options. Each option has different results. But we do many things because we always do them. So we don’t think much about brushing our teeth or taking a shower. These are not real choices.
But many daily situations force us to choose. We have to decide whether to stick to one choice, or pick another.
Not long ago, people in the US had only one insurance company. Today, in the US and Europe, there are many companies. They offer many more plans that are hard to understand. Many people feel lost. They don’t even know what insurance they need.
Choosing insurance, retirement plans, and financial planning is very important for our lives. This makes the choice even harder. It feels too much. Governments or offices cannot help us. We have to do it ourselves.
So, a lot is at risk with such a decision. For example, if someone chose no insurance or the wrong one when they were young, this choice can cause problems when they are old. It can make them feel regret later.
The pressure to choose well keeps growing. But we often don’t know which choice is best. This is because we don’t know enough, or we don’t know what will happen in the future.
Blink 3 – The more options we have, the more mistakes we make.
To know what you want means to know what feelings a choice will bring. This seems easy at first. But science shows it is not. Many people find it very hard.
The more choices we have, the more mistakes we make. This is because our choices depend on past experiences. But our memories are often not perfect.
Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his team did many experiments. They showed that our memory of an event mostly depends on the moments when we felt best or worst. The end of an event stays with us more than the start. So when we think about our last holiday, we probably remember the best or worst parts first. How strong these feelings were matters. A nice walk with our partner can make us forget a sad argument from day two. Our memory of the whole holiday stays positive. But if we are robbed on the way to the airport, that bad feeling will stay with us more than the three great weeks before.
Sadly, we are not only bad at remembering the past. We are also not good at knowing what we will want or choose in the future. We often make wrong guesses.
One study with students shows this problem clearly. Students were asked to pick a snack for their weekly class breaks from a list. They chose what they wanted then. Most weeks, they picked the same snack. But some students had to choose their snacks for the next three weeks at the start. They picked different snacks, thinking they might get bored of the same one. So for the next few weeks, they had to eat what they chose first. They were much less happy than the other group of students.
We see that more complex choices mean more mistakes. If the students had hundreds of snacks to choose from, they would likely have been even unhappier with their decision.
More choices do not just make it harder to pick the right thing. Even worse: they make us unhappier too.
Blink 4 – The more choices we have, the less happy we are with our final decision.
Where should we go for summer vacation this year? Maybe hiking in Norway, or to the French Riviera?
No matter what we choose, we always have to give up the other option. These are called “opportunity costs.” They are part of every decision. For a hiking trip to Norway, we would miss out on French food. We would also miss improving our French. If we choose a beach holiday, we would miss Norway’s beautiful nature and the peace of a hiking trip.
If opportunity costs are high, the option we choose seems less appealing. This is because we feel we are missing out on a lot.
One study proved this. It asked people how much they would pay for a year’s subscription to a certain magazine. If they only saw that one magazine, they would pay more. But if they saw other magazines too, they would pay less. This is because they thought about what they would miss by not choosing the other magazines. When we have to give up other good options, we are less happy with our choice.
Our happiness with our choice goes down when there are other options. It goes down even more as the number of choices grows.
In another study, two groups tried different jams. Then they said if they would buy one and which one. The first group had six flavors. The second group had 24. The second group was much less likely to buy jam. The group with only six choices bought more. One jam did not seem special when there were 23 others. So people did not want it as much.
So, in all these cases: More choices mean higher opportunity costs. And less happiness with what we pick.
Blink 5 – We quickly get used to things and lose interest.
When we buy something really nice, like a new laptop, camera, or phone, we often notice that our excitement quickly goes away. What was exciting at first often becomes normal after a few weeks.
Like other animals, people react less strongly to something they experience often. We get used to things. This common human process is called adaptation. Someone from the countryside might be amazed by Frankfurt’s tall buildings. But a banker who walks there every day doesn’t even notice them.
Hedonic adaptation means we get used to joy. This is why we don’t stay excited about good things for as long as we expect. It means our happiness gets less each time. For example, the first time something good happens, our happiness might go up by 20 degrees. The second time, only by 15 degrees, then 10, and so on. In the end, it brings us almost no joy at all.
Many studies show this in real life. One study looked at lottery winners and people who could not walk well. The lottery winners had won between $50,000 and $1 million. The other group had become paralyzed in accidents. Both groups rated how happy they were with their lives, from 1 to 5. Surprisingly, the lottery winners were not happier than the accident victims. The accident victims said they were only a little less happy than healthy people.
This study shows that people get used to their situation. No matter if it seems good or bad at first. This also means we expect a new laptop to make us very happy. But in reality, that happy feeling only lasts for a short time.
Blink 6 – Having freedom to choose makes us unhappy – also in society.
In America, people think wealth and freedom to choose lead to happiness. But this is not true. It is the opposite. The richer and freer people are, the less happy the average American feels.
In the last 30 years, the US economy (GDP) has grown more than twice. But American happiness has gone down. Fewer people said they were “very happy” with their lives. More and more people have clinical depression. This shows the same trend. Some believe the risk of depression is ten times higher than in 1900.
This is also because people face so many more decisions. If we have many choices and are unhappy with our decision, we usually blame ourselves. This makes us suffer a lot.
Psychologist Martin Seligman found that these situations, like failing or losing control when there are too many choices, can cause depression. This is because of how people explain why things went wrong. When someone is depressed, they think it’s always their fault, it will always be bad, and it affects everything. They might think: “I fail in all parts of my life, I will always fail, and it’s always me who fails.” This self-blame grows easily in a world with “unlimited choices.” If we have total freedom to choose our lives, we can only blame ourselves when things go wrong. But if we have fewer choices, we can sometimes blame the situation.
Too many choices, and how society supports this, makes us feel responsible for our lives. But it also makes us feel guilty when things don’t go well. This self-blame can lead to depression. So there’s good reason to think that freedom to choose and general unhappiness are closely linked.
Blink 7 – Maximizers only want the best and suffer because of it.
When we are shopping for a new sweater, and we really want the best one, we look at every other option to be sure about our choice. Then we might be Maximizers.
Maximizing means looking at all possible choices. This often takes a very long time. There is rarely only one other choice or one thing that affects our decision. Just buying a sweater would make a Maximizer compare endlessly. They would compare color, style, material, quality, brand, and how it was made.
Barry Schwartz’s studies showed this behavior takes a lot of time. But it also involves imagining things. People think about choices that are not real or very unlikely. If Maximizers can choose between a cashmere sweater and a cheap one, they will probably look for a cheap cashmere sweater.
When Maximizers finally choose something, they are usually unhappier with their choice than other people. They know more about what they gave up (opportunity costs). So they often feel bad after buying something. Also, long after buying, they still think about other options. They even think about choices they couldn’t make. These thoughts make them nervous. This makes them even unhappier with their choice.
With so many choices today, trying to maximize quickly becomes tiring. There is another way. Even smart Maximizers can see that Satisficing is better.
Blink 8 – Satisficers are content and usually happier.
We all know someone who finds it easy to make decisions. These people quickly choose based on some rules. They don’t need “the best” thing. Herbert Simon, an American social scientist, called these people Satisficers.
Satisficing is a simple way to choose. You look until you find something that meets your needs. Then you stop looking.
A Satisficer puts choices into two groups. Those that meet their rules, and those that do not. When they choose, they only look at the first group. They don’t waste time on the second.
If a Satisficer looks for a sweater, she buys the first one that fits well, is good quality, and has a good price. She does not worry about other sweaters she might find in the next shop.
Satisficers are generally happier with their choices. They are also happier with their lives in general. They don’t think about what another choice might have given them. So they don’t feel bad about missed chances. They also spend less time imagining a perfect world. They live more in the present. In surveys about happiness, Satisficers usually score the highest.
We are lucky if we are modern Satisficers. This means we are almost protected from the growing number of choices. Luckily, almost all of us have a ‘Satisficer gene’ inside us. We just need to use it. The best way is to stop trying to be a Maximizer. This means letting go of the idea that there is one ‘best’ thing.
Blink 9 – A little bit of limits makes us happier – also in our relationships.
The endless freedom to choose today causes more problems than we might realize. Loneliness and stress are two examples.
We earn and spend more money than before. But we spend less time with others. For example, Robert Lane, a political scientist, says that more money and freedom mean our relationships become weaker and fewer. This makes us less happy.
Sometimes, relationships can feel like they limit us. But they are a key part of being happy. Being part of a group, like family or friends, helps us stay happy. Look at the Amish community in the USA. Their rate of depression is more than 80% lower than the US average. This is partly because they have strong community ties.
So, if we want strong relationships with others, we need to let these relationships guide us and sometimes limit our choices. Joining groups like family, friends, or volunteer work means putting others’ needs first sometimes. This helps build and strengthen these bonds.
By doing this, we give up some of our freedom to choose. This makes things easier for us. The more we limit ourselves, the fewer choices we have. For example, if we decide never to cheat on our partner, this removes a choice in many situations because we have already made up our minds. But we must stick to this rule.
Too much freedom can hurt our relationships. This also hurts what makes us happy. So it is good to set limits for ourselves in some situations. This helps us make our relationships stronger and feel happier overall.
Zusammenfassung
The choices we face every day are getting harder. Society offers endless choices. This harms our well-being. More choices make it harder to pick the right one. It also makes us less happy with what we choose. It is good to limit our choices sometimes. Because the less we have to decide, the happier we are.
What you can do:
Learn from your past choices. Think about the choices you made recently. How much time, effort, and stress did you put into them? How happy are you with what you chose? Doing this helps you understand how you make decisions. Then you can decide how to make choices in the future to be happier.
Learn to value what is good enough. If you always look for ‘the best’, you will often feel disappointed and unhappy. Instead, try to be happy with what is ‘good enough’. When do you already do this in your life? Where else can you use this way of thinking?
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/anleitung-zur-unzufriedenheit-de