Choices
We love having choices, we hate making choices. -Eric Barker
It’s a bit of a paradox really. The fact we love to have choices. It makes us feel more engaged when we have to expend the energy to select from a broad selection. The Jam Experiment in behavioral economics is a well known study. The basic idea was when offered more choices of jam at a sample table vs. fewer choices people are more likely to buy jam whne there are fewer choices. Here’s the catch. This experiment has not been reproduced successfully: meaning it does not hold true over time. It was true the day the experiment was run in that location with the people who were present.
A hypothesis that makes more sense is that we love having choices, because it makes us feel powerful, but we hate making choices because we are afraid of making the wrong one, or it makes us feel less powerful. This could explain why the experiment can’t be reproduced. At the root of it all is uncertainty, or fear. Fear of getting it wrong: and on any given day in any given grocery store we may be afraid of picking the wrong jam. Of course the jam is a metaphor for all kinds of choices we have to make in daily life.
I think the unreproducibility of the experiment may be connected to the total choice load increase in everyday life; choice load being the total number of choices we have across any given day. We are fatigued with decision making. As this has increased so has generalized social anxiety.
Keep in mind choices are not just about things, they are also about social interactions. Do I engage in this social media platform with those people or not? Either choice can result in social anxiety. Do I talk to that person in the hallway about the issue we had in a meeting last week, or not? We love choices, we hate making them.
