Abstraction

I was talking with a friend the other day in a local Blockbuster. He commented that 7-11 stores used to rent movies, and that he missed having that option. “With 7-11, there were, like, five movies to choose from. It was really easy to decide which of the five I wanted to rent — I always made a choice. At Blockbuster, there are a million movies. I walk in here, and I can’t decide.”

This reminded me of one of my favorites concepts; the notion of the tyranny of choice. For some people, living as a privileged person in a place with plenty of everything is psychologically damaging. Having options can make you unhappy.

At the core of this is the observation that people can be measured by the extent to which they are “maximizers;” that is, to the extent to which they carefully analyze their decisions in an effort to find the very best option. When making a decision, maximizers weigh every option carefully, taking time to consider the very best possible choice.

The trouble with being a maximizer, it turns out, is that the “best possible choice” does not exist independent of a person’s mind. There is no car that is innately “best,” just as there is no “best” entree, shoes, vacation spot, or anything else. In the end, the best choice is the one that makes you feel the best having chosen it. And there’s the rub.

When you choose to go in a particular direction, you are simultaneously choosing against going in another direction. More to the point, you are choosing against many different directions. Having carefully studied those options, the maximizer is intimately familiar with all of the wonderful qualities he just rejected. This creates a two-fold burden for the poor maximizer: the pain of losing all the options now rejected, and the quickly diminishing joy found in the choice actually made.

Consider the person obsessed with buying a new car. Once chosen and bought, the new car quickly loses its patina. It become mundane and hum-drum with familiarity. In the meantime, all the various lost features offered by the dozen cars rejected float in the (now depressed) maximizer’s mind. Compounding this pain is the amount of energy put into the choosing process; after pouring energy into finding just the right option, it doesn’t feel very good.

The situation isn’t just anecdotal or an interesting thought experiment, there’s lots of evidence that too many options cause real suffering. From the sciam article linked to above:

Assessments of well-being by various social scientists–among them, David G. Myers of Hope College and Robert E. Lane of Yale University–reveal that increased choice and increased affluence have, in fact, been accompanied by decreased well-being in the U.S. and most other affluent societies.

Opposite the maximizer is the satisficer (a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice), someone that chooses the option offered that’s good enough, without obsessing about whether the choice is the best possible. This doesn’t mean that satisficers settle for low quality, nor does it mean that they don’t care. It means they don’t obsess — and often, when considering the cost of an obsessive decision-making process, a satisficing choice is near-best anyway in terms of overall cost.

The moral? Pay attention to your decision making process and notice if you tend to struggle or obsess. If you do, force yourself to say “Screw it, I’ll take the middle one” (or whatever other method that quickly identifies the good-enough option). You’ll be happy that you did. And never spend more than five minutes searching for a movie in a blockbuster.