Why less is more.
Barry Schwartz raises a somewhat comical version of a sad truth. By raising awareness to the increasing choices that consumers face, Schwartz comments on why consumers actually suffer from the plethora of choices. He says that it has two major negative effects. The first being “paralysis rather than liberation, with so many options to chose from people find it very difficult to chose at all.” As ironic as this seems, its true. For me it has never been more evident in my life than something so simple as choosing a topic for an English 112 paper. Two weeks ago I was given the assignment of writing an argumentative research paper. My professor did not assign a topic or give a list of any, instead he left it up to us. I still have yet to come up with a topic that I am happy with writing extensively about which leads into Schwartz second point. “Even if we manage to over come paralysis, we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice if we had less to choose from…. Its easy to imagine a different choice that would have been better.” Every topic that I have come up with is not good enough or not enjoyable enough with the sense of there always being a better choice. Hopefully soon I will solve my topic dilemma, however during the stress from this uncertainty – its nice to get a good laugh.