The Paradox of Choice: “Maximizers”

Here’s an excerpt from The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz that talks about the way that some people — “maximizers” as he coins the term — make choices and how those choices may affect them.

Maximizers need to be assured that every purchase or decision was the best that could be made. Yet how can anyone truly know that any given option is absolutely the best possible? The only way to know is to check out all the alternatives. A maximizer can’t be certain that she has found the best sweater unless she’s looked at all the sweaters. She can’t know that she is getting the best price unless she’s checked out all the prices. As a decision strategy, maximizing creates a daunting task which becomes all the more daunting as the number of options increases.

…

Maximizers are much more susceptible than satisficers to all forms of regret especially that known as “buyer’s remorse.” If you’re a satisficer and you choose something that’s good enough to meet your standards, you are less likely to care if something better is just around the corner. But if you’re a maximizer, such a discovery can be a source of real pain. “If only I had gone to one more store.” “If only I had read Consumer Reports.” “If only I had listened to Jack’s advice.” You can generate if only’s indefinitely, and each one you generate will diminish the satisfaction you get from the choice you actually made.

It’s hard to go through life regretting every decision you make because it might not have been the best possible decision. And it’s easy to see that if you experience regret on a regular basis, it will rob you of at least some of the satisfaction that your good decisions warrant.

I’ve been slowly reading The Paradox of Choice for the past 2 weeks and so far I’ve found it very interesting. To me, the book puts into very clear words what I’ve always felt about my decision-making process. Although I may not have conciously recognized it, there were times when I made decisions when I would either backtrack, regret, or just not care, and that as a start is what The Paradox of Choice goes into.

Choice is good, but the act of choosing is trickier than most expect it to be. Reading the descriptions and explanations in this book make me think of all sorts of people I know and how they handle situations where they are given a choice. I find that lots of the descriptions in the book can be applied to all sorts of situations I often find myself in, specifically those situations where one person is responsible for choosing a certain activity — namely, finding a place to eat.

I can name the people I hang out with who would always rather be the first to say, “Herman you pick the place”, than to have the pressure of choosing a place to eat be on their heads. In groups, there are expectations to be had even in such a simple thing as choosing a place to eat, and the failure to meet those expectations in accordance to what your peers may think of you is one reason why I see the responsibility of choosing food always to be on my plate; the people I am with just can’t stomach the possibility of choosing a bad place to eat. They may say that I know the area better and thus I can choose a better place to eat, but I no longer consider that a valid reason for me to be the one to always choose.

I find that incredibly silly.