Choices: Headaches for more than just the holiday season

     Choices are like butterflies. You try to capture the ones you think are the most beautiful and unique. However, without the proper skills you may damage them (or injure yourself) or not be able to collect them at all. If you are successful with your hunt of these darlings of the insect world, you later discover your collection may not be as rare or as beautiful as you thought.

      For many of us, the holidays may seem like butterfly hunting season, the one during which we must make the most and most difficult choices; what gifts to buy, what meals to serve, whether or not to visit relatives or some sought after location, or just keep them simple.  However, we should reflect on the fact that we make choices – some automatic and easy, some deliberate and difficult – during every waking moment of the year. And just dealing with the multitude of choices, whether we notice it or not, take a toll on our mental and physical abilities.

     “As the number of choices increase, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear………the negatives escalate until we become overloaded” – this observation discussed in The Paradox of Choice, Why More is Less (2004, Harper Books) by Barry Schwartz.  In this provocative book Schwartz explores how the range of choices people face has increased over the years; how difficult and demanding it has become in making wise choices;  and “how several psychological processes explain why added options do not make people better off: adaptation, regret, missed opportunities, raised expectations, and feeling of inadequacy in comparison with others”.

     Adaptation is one of the key psychological processes that seems to be emphasized (if not subtly) throughout Paradox of Choice. One process for which adaptation is called for is decision-making.  In decision-making one would normally define a goal or goals; identify some of the options for meeting the goal(s); evaluate the options; pick the best option; and, later, reflect on results of the chosen option to change or modify goals. Decision-making can be hard work, and the difficulty increases with the number of options we can choose from. This difficulty almost always translates into ineffective use of the process.

     The subject of choice is a hot topic of many of today’s self-help books and current media (the internet and magazines). In fact, it is too hot to write about in just one blog column – look in future editions of this blog for more discussion on information presented in The Paradox of Choice. Until then, chose wisely!