Choice, the ability to make up your mind and change it, affects both natural and synthetic happiness differently. The freedom to choose among multiple attractive futures and find the one you will most enjoy is the friend of natural happiness. Natural happiness is derived from getting what you want. However, the freedom to choose and change your mind is the enemy of synthetic happiness. Synthetic happiness is how you deal with not getting what you want.
This dichotomy is on full display in two of the talks on TED’s “What makes you happy?” playlist. Barry Schwartz riffs on this in his work on the paradox of choice. Supporting natural happiness, Malcolm Gladwell extolls the benefits of choice.
The case for more choice
Gladwell weaves a vivid narrative of a man named Howard Moskowitz and his impact on the food business. An eclectic character and adept problem solver, Moskowitz, according to Gladwell, is single-handedly responsible for the proliferation of variety found in the grocery store today.
…if you go to a really good supermarket, do you know how many Ragus there are? 36! In six varieties: cheese, light, robusto, rich & hearty, old world traditional, and extra chunky garden. That’s Howard’s doing. That is Howard’s gift to the American people.” – Malcolm Gladwell
And that’s just from Ragu.
Gladwell implies that “more choice = more happiness”, and it does create happiness. According to Dan Gilbert’s work mentioned above, this is the type of happiness that people think they want. Natural happiness.
Gladwell’s point is that everyone is different. Given that everyone is different a one-size fits all approach to addressing people’s wants and needs is sub-optimal. Therefore, figuring out what people want and delivering it is a better approach that leads to more happiness (people getting what they want). In theory, the logic is easy to follow and makes sense. Who wouldn’t want their needs and wants more accurately met?
The case against more choice
However, there are unintended consequences of increasing variety to meet people’s unique preferences. The implication of having an abundance of choice is that there are more decisions to be made. In order to select what you anticipate will maximize your happiness when choosing pasta sauce, you need to answer a bunch of questions.
- Do you prefer sweet, spicy, “tomato-ey”, or garlic dominant sauces? Maybe you like a balanced sauce?
- Do you prefer smooth or chunky sauces? How chunky?
- Which of the 6 aforementioned varieties do you like most?
Essentially, you need to become a product specialist. Personally, I’m not sure I know the answers to all these questions. The pasta sauce in our pantry is usually purchased based on whatever sounds good at the moment. So while there is an abundance of options available to better suit my unique taste buds, it’s too much work to figure out which one it is.
Where Gladwell implies that more choice = more happiness, Schwartz refers to it as the “official dogma” of all Western industrial societies.
This, I think, is so deeply embedded in the water supply that it wouldn’t occur to anyone to question it.” – Barry Schwartz
Enter the paradox of choice. The paradox of choice states that while choice is essential to freedom and autonomy, both important to our well-being, we do not seem to be benefiting from it.
Schwartz admits that there are both positives and negatives to an abundance of choice, but focuses on the non-obvious costs of too much choice.
First, excessive choice often leads to decision paralysis as too many options make it difficult to choose at all. This is where people procrastinate on making the decision or become a “satisficer” as opposed to a “maximizer”.
Second, even when we overcome paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result than if we had fewer options. The reason for this is that it’s easy to imagine or observe how a different choice would have been better. It’s harder to appreciate what you have and move on with your life.
Third, escalating expectations. More options equate to higher expectations for the level of satisfaction you derive from your choice. If reality doesn’t meet your expectations then you will undoubtedly be disappointed. There’s little room for being pleasantly surprised when you have high expectations for everything.
His final point comes down to who you blame for your dissatisfaction. When the world only offers a limited set of options it’s easy to blame the world for your disappointment. Alternatively, when the world supplies you with enough abundance to address your unique preferences, you can no longer blame the world for your dissatisfaction. The blame falls on yourself.
What are the takeaways?
There are clearly two sides to this argument on choice. As Gladwell outlines and Schwartz acknowledges, more choice is better suited to addressing individual preferences. But only up to a certain, still unknown, point.
There are further arguments against excessive choice. In practice, I suspect our unique preferences are not being addressed much better than in the past. There’s a disconnect between the availability of options with more utility and the consumer’s ability to select them. As options expand, knowledge of personal preferences and how they connect to product variables becomes increasingly important. This is more cognitively demanding for the consumer.
More importantly, per Dan Gilbert, we overestimate the impact of natural happiness and hinder synthetic happiness at the same time. The type of happiness addressed with more choice is natural happiness. Satisfaction from getting what you want is fleeting. Synthetic happiness, the type of happiness driven by how we deal with reality, is a bigger and more stable explanatory factor. Synthetic happiness is hurt by abundant choice.