the paradox of choice
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TimHarfor…
Is more choice better? Ten years ago the answer seemed obvious: Yes. Now the conventional wisdom is the opposite: lots of choice makes people less likely to choose anything, and less happy when they do choose.
The most famous supporting evidence is an experiment conducted by two psychologists, Mark Lepper and Sheena Iyengar. They set up a jam-tasting stall in a posh supermarket in California. Sometimes they offered six varieties of jam, at other times 24; jam tasters were then offered a voucher to buy jam at a discount.
The bigger display attracted more customers but very few of them actually bought jam. The display that offered less choice made many more sales – in fact, only 3 per cent of jam tasters at the 24-flavour stand used their discount voucher, versus 30 per cent at the six-flavour stand. This is an astonishingly strong effect – and utterly counter to mainstream economic theory…
Benjamin Scheibehenne, a psychologist at the University of Basel … decided … to design a range of experiments to figure out when choice demotivates, and when it does not…
trying to replicate some classic experiments… They couldn’t find any sign of the “choice is bad” effect…
After designing 10 different experiments in which participants were asked to make a choice, and finding very little evidence that variety caused any problems, Scheibehenne and his colleagues tried to assemble all the studies…
The average of all these studies suggests that offering lots of extra choices seems to make no important difference …
I’d call the leftist embrace of “choice in the market is terrible” the “cold fusion of social science”, but that would be unfair.
…to cold fusion, which is getting a bit of traction these days.
November 14th, 2009 at 8:50 am
I think you’re conflating two things that aren’t the same.
The idea behind the Paradox of Choice is that while SOME choice is good, there are massive diminishing returns the more choices you add. If there’s only one gas station in town, adding a second is a huge deal. A third is a big deal. A fourth is a moderately big deal. A sixtieth and you just start getting annoyed with the fact that it’s hard to find anything except a gas station.
Surely you see a difference between saying “Which of these two will I choose” and “Which of these 30 will I choose?”
November 14th, 2009 at 9:42 am
[quote comment="227634"]I think you’re conflating two things that aren’t the same.
The idea behind the Paradox of Choice is that while SOME choice is good, there are massive diminishing returns the more choices you add. If there’s only one gas station in town, adding a second is a huge deal. A third is a big deal. A fourth is a moderately big deal. A sixtieth and you just start getting annoyed with the fact that it’s hard to find anything except a gas station.
Surely you see a difference between saying “Which of these two will I choose” and “Which of these 30 will I choose?”[/quote]
Leftists don’t say that there are diminishing returns to more choices.
Leftists say that, beyond a certain point, there are negative returns to additional choices.
They then further say that the increase utility for us dumb hicks, they, our enlightened rulers, need to restrict the number of choices available.
November 14th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
“in fact, only 3 per cent of jam tasters at the 24-flavour stand used their discount voucher, versus 30 per cent at the six-flavour stand.”
I’d say the people at the 24-flavour stands were simple full.
November 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
[quote comment="227636"]Leftists don’t say that there are diminishing returns to more choices.
Leftists say that, beyond a certain point, there are negative returns to additional choices.
They then further say that the increase utility for us dumb hicks, they, our enlightened rulers, need to restrict the number of choices available.[/quote]
Actually I’ve heard this is what psychologists say in peer reviewed research (although I know you tend to consider scientists to be leftists). Of course I haven’t read the research myself so there could be a middle man misrepresenting things. Reducing choices is certainly good in UI design but that’s a slightly different problem.
However, before declaring the paradox of choice dead I’ll need more than a single article without links or references.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Aaron has a strong point – one of the most valuable skills in UI design is *reducing choices*. You need a big button in the middle of your steering wheel to blare at the car drifting into your lane at 75 MPH – not a selection of 3,000 ringtones.
Does this carry over into design of retail displays? Possibly. The simplicity of the Manhattan Apple Store has translated into record sales per square foot.
But does this translate into “less is really more”? No way.
There are a brazillion examples of massive choice working demonstrably better. Look at Amazon, Home Depot, or Wal-Mart.
People and companies are smart enough to figure out what works well in each specific situation. Only a political tool would apply the results of a jam study to make general claims on human nature. There’s no need to refute the jam study to make the opposite claims.
November 19th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Massive amounts of confusing choices with little differentiation in a high-stress environment with a time constraint is one thing. Limiting choice in non-dangerous, non-time-ctritical applications is different.
Even still, this is not solved by eliminating all choices, but by giving the option to sort through choices ahead of time. Millions of possible combinations on my computer get sorted through over time to create a desktop environment that I am comfortable with. You may find it chaotic and confusing when you borrow my computer for ten minutes. But I have sorted through the choices available to me to create a friendly working environment FOR ME.
I don’t want to set up the options on my phone while driving. But once the options (hundreds of them! eek! omg!) have been sorted through and set, taking a phone call is no big deal.
Mandating limited choices is BS. We don’t suffer from choice, we suffer from delicate effing flower syndrome, where people are discouraged from being responsible for their choices from birth through adulthood. This is just one more example of that.
November 19th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
The jam study was stupidly designed and was guaranteed to give the result the authors wanted. How many grocery shoppers have time to sample 24 different jams? How can you remember if jam sample 14 was a bit better than sample 2? How long can you futz around when your cart has milk, ice cream, and fresh meat in it? Is it surprising that the shoppers often didn’t use the coupons?
November 19th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Should we restrict the choice of topics social scientists can analyze?
November 20th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Alvin Toffler predicted that over-choice would paralyze us. He was, of course, wrong. People with choices will make a choice. Once that choice is registered, other competing choice will diminish, and the best will gain market share. When these choices no longer meet the demands of the market, more choices will proliferate the market. When my choice is A or A, well, I guess I choose A.