Less is More - the Tyranny of Choice

Neville Hobson discusses the agony of choice and outlines an FT article on the same.

Whenever I travel to the US, I get apprehensive. Not about the travel or why I'm visiting the States. No, it's all to do with breakfast choices. Here's the scenario. It's breakfast time in my hotel. I sit and the ever-so-friendly waitress asks me for my order. Apprehension starts if I request eggs. Before I first visited the US some 20 years ago, I never knew how many choices there were for eggs. Scrambled. Fried. Boiled. Poached. Sunny side up. That's just to begin with. Then the sub-sets - easy, soft, medium, etc. And let's not get started on the choices for toast. Or juice. With so much (too much) to choose from, I tend to take the cowardly route and either not have breakfast at all, or order it in my room using the tick-box card you hang outside your door.

This is another example of what Barry Schwartz calls the Paradox of Choice. IT Conversations has a great recording (you may call it a podcast if you want) of a lecture and Q&A session with him. There's also a good article in Scientific American – "The Tyranny of Choice" but you need a subscription to read it. It's all about maximisers (maximizers for the American readers) and satisficers. As you might expect – maximisers want perfection, and always worry that the choice they've made isn't the right one. Satisficers are generally happy with good enough.