Paralysis by Analysis

BY Doug Hendrie

Freedom of choice is a popular catchphrase of those strange bedfellows, social liberals and economic liberals. But is choice freedom? Computer says no, if we go by two recent books, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Barney Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice.

Schwartz’s argument is simple: that too much choice can be bewildering and frequently overpowering. The most frequently encountered choice is shopping: choice raised to an artform, the consumer pitting their wits against the hundreds of varieties of competing biscuit and thousands of fashion brands. And let’s not forget jam.

Gladwell extracts an interesting lesson from psychology professor Sheena Iyengar’s tasting booth experiment. Iyengar stocked a booth with a variety of exotic jams. Sometimes she put out six and other times, 24 varieties. According to conventional economic wisdom, the more choices consumers have the more they are likely to buy, because it is easier to find their perfect jam. Iyengar found the opposite: a third of those stopping by the small stall bought jam, while only 3% bought jam at the bigger stall.

Gladwell suggests purchasing jam is a snap decision. But if your unconscious is given too much data to churn through and spit out a snap decision, you suffer choice paralysis. The main thrust in Blink is that people can and should learn the art of thin-slicing: trusting our unconscious judgements over our supposed rational consciousness. Especially during shopping.

Shopping is a fetishisation of choice. But Schwartz finds that people are enjoying it less and less, ranking grocery shopping second last on a list of pleasurable activities, and other shopping fifth from the bottom. He writes: “People are shopping more now but enjoying it less. With all the options available, picking what you want takes more effort.”

Why? New science shows that autonomy and freedom of choice don’t necessarily make us happier: “Usually the things we want are the things we like, the things that give us pleasure,” writes Schwartz. “But powerful evidence has recently appeared that ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ are served by fundamentally different brain systems. Drug addicts desperately ‘want’ their drugs even after a point where ingesting the drugs provides very little pleasure.”

Albert Camus once posed the question: “Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” His point, argues Schwartz, was that everything in life is choice and that existence is defined by the choices people make. It’s no wonder that in the modern world choice has become proof of modernity, proof of existence – and simultaneously the hardest thing to do once we become conscious of the myriad choices we face each day.

Investigating the choices of confirmed product fans, Gladwell finds that under the hood, competing world-famous products are far more similar than choosers would like to believe – and that as a result, people are far less certain of their choices than they think they are. Take the well-known cola wars of the 1980s. Pepsi started chasing Coke’s market share, blanketing America with TV ads depicting dedicated Coke drinkers taking a blind taste test – and overwhelmingly preferring Pepsi to Coke. Nervous, Coke came up with New Coke, which won out in taste tests – but bombed horribly on the market.

The reason? People drink Coke less because of the taste than the unconscious associations with the can and the drink’s image. So even when we do push through choice paralysis, making choices and sticking to them, they are less trustworthy and less certain than we think.

Fetishising choice becomes ridiculous when you look at the choices – and choice anxieties – we already outsource. Think of the raft of health professionals you permit to make choices on your behalf. Most of the time they’ll be right. But more importantly, they save us from impossible choices – and we’re grateful for this lack of freedom. Part of our trust in doctors is thankfulness that we don’t have to make such decisions.

Schwartz suggests that coming to terms with our limitations is the key to negotiating choice. Rather than being maximisers – people who are always trying to get the best product – we should be satisficers, people who choose a product or service that’s good enough for the task. Satisficers are usually happy with their choices. Maximisers: almost never. So go forth, be satisfied and don’t ever modify your latte.