Good review of the psychology of choice and how ir relates to mental health in contemporary society.

In brief having more choice is not always better and can in fact lead to worse and less satisfying decisions. ( )

Useful resource on decision making. ( )

http://pro-libertate.net/node/33 ( )

For those struggling with stress and anxiety that often comes with decision paralysis, this is a great read.

Schwartz describes how having an excessive amount of choice in our lives can bring unhappiness and suffering. He describes some of the many sources of choices in modern life, some psychological factors relating to choice making, how choices can cause unhappiness, and some techniques for dealing with this unhappiness.

First of all, Schwartz emphasizes that choice is good. It is vital to happiness. However, he claims that in the here and now of the 21st century US, we are overwhelmed with choices, most of which are not important and many of which were not faced in the past. Schwartz's claim is that while choice is important, having to use brain power on unimportant choices slowly chips away at happiness. The important choices differ for each individual, so society should not necessarily work to decrease the choices available. However, individuals need to learn how to focus on choices that are important for them and ignore the rest.

Schwartz then discusses decision making. Decision making includes figuring out goals, evaluating the importance of each goal, arraying the options, evaluating each option relative to the goals, pick the winning option, and later using the consequences of the choice to modify future decision making processes. In practice, this process if followed partially and with limited consciousness.

Schwartz proposes that there are two types of choosers: maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers want to make the best decisions. Satisficers have a set of goals and are satisfied with any choice that fulfills those goals. Schwartz claims that maximizers might get objectively better results than satisficers, but satisficers get better subjective results (that is, they are happier). Everyone is a maximizer in some areas and a satisficer in others, but most people have a general tendency one way or the other.

The core of the book explores how choice decreases happiness. There are two key points. First, comparing a choice made with a choice that could have been made generally decreases happiness; it is likely that there is some way in which the another choice was superior to the chosen option, even if it was the best choice overall. Second, people adapt; over time, the happiness derived from a choice decreases, contrary to expectations that the happiness would remain constant. These two factors make people more likely to regret the choices they and more likely to feel they do not have control over their happiness. Furthermore, these factors will be more potent for maximizers because they cannot fall back on the idea that their goals were met.

After making a convincing case that excessive choice can decrease happiness, Schwartz discusses a set of tips for preventing too much choice from decreasing your happiness:

- Choose when to choose. Not all decisions on important. Decide which ones are important to you, and do not worry about the rest.

- Be a chooser, not a picker. Make your decisions based on your goals, not just by picking something out of all the choices available. This means that if nothing fits your goals, you may choose not to take any of the options.

- Satisfice more and maximize less.

- Think about the opportunity costs of opportunity costs. That is, limit how much you think about the opportunities you are missing out on.

- Make your decisions non-reversible. This one seems counter intuitive, but the idea is that if you cannot unmake a choice, you are more likely to try to be satisfied with it and making it work.

- Practice an "attitude of gratitude". If you focus on why the choices you have already made were the right choice to make, you will have an easier time not comparing it negatively to the choices you could have made.

- Regret less. Be a satisficer, not a maximizer. Reduce the number of options you have; you cannot miss what you do not know about.

- Anticipate adaption. Know that the pleasure a choice brings you in the future will probably not be as much as the initial pleasure it gives you so that you will not be disappointed when that happens.

- Control expectations. Set your expectations based on your goals and your needs. Be especially wary of letting others (especially the media or advertising) set your expectations.

- Curtail social comparison. Compare yourself to others less. Try to let your satisfaction be determined by how you feel about a decision, not how the actions or choices of others make you think you should feel.

- Learn how to love constraints. Constraints can decrease the amount of time you spend on the unimportant choices and give you the time to focus on the important ones.

Schwartz justifies his claims reasonably well with citations of psychological studies, and he is generally good at pointing out which claims are his own hypotheses and inferences and which are not. Overall, his arguments are convincing, and his claims generally consistent with my own experience, so I am willing to believe with his overall premise that too much choice can decrease happiness.

My main criticism of The Paradox of Choice is that it often seemed like Schwartz was bulking up his points with repetition to make the book longer. The primary content of the book could have fit into a long essay. Since there is not really a market for long essays these days, I do not blame Schwartz for bulking things up to make it book length.

After reading this book, I am going to consciously try to be aware of when I am making choices, when those choices are decreasing my happiness, and what choices are important to me. That awareness alone is reason enough to have read the book for me. ( )