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Choosing from 20 different types of jam is hard work. (ABC Catalyst)
Have you ever wondered if there might be such a thing as too much choice?
Conventional wisdom says that consumer choice is a very good thing because it provides the bedrock for the competitive market economy.
Empowered consumers fuel the competition that leads to better and cheaper products and services. But does it necessarily follow that if some choice is good, more must be better?
In this timeless 1996 story, ABC TV's Catalyst program looked at the modern phenomenon of 'over-choice', where having to choose between too many roughly equivalent options doesn't make people happy, but instead induces stress, anxiety and even fear.
This phenomenon of 'choice overload' exists at all price points, from homes to cars to mobile phone plans, and even down to small decisions such as which flavour of jam to choose at the supermarket.
The people most adversely affected are those that psychologists call 'maximisers'. Maximisers always strive to make the best decision, and so feel compelled to weigh up every aspect of every choice. That's a lot of cognitive load for every decision, and it sometimes results in a form of paralysing anxiety, where the fear not making the best decision leaves the maximiser either incapable of making any choice at all, or else never feeling satisfied with the choices they make.
Less affected are people known as 'satisficers', who are more interested in making a 'good' decision than in making the 'best' decision, but even satisficers can suffer from choice overload.
Could companies serve themselves and their customers better if they offered fewer choices? The science suggests that there is an ideal number of variables that the human brain can comfortably cope with.
A full transcript of this video is available on the Catalyst website.
Topics:
science-and-technology,
social-sciences,
anthropology-and-sociology,
psychology