Choice Overload!

Sheena Iyengar in her excellent talk on choice highlights the problem of choice overload. Iyengar's research is part of a school of behavioral economics that seeks to address how people behave with making economic decisions. This is a departure from schools of thought such as classical economics where the phrase "all other things being equal" often appear. In life many things are equal and even our moods can affect choice. Going deeper, behavioral economics seeks to explain how the brain functions with choice. It is a blend of psychology and economics and it's also one of my favorite topics!

Iyengar's research states that with too many choices people are like to experience one (or all) of three things:
1) Less likely to choice- people are less likely to make a choice when they feel overwhelmed by choices. This can be subtle as even innocous items can create choice overload. Iyengar used jam for her experiement however it can be applied to most any item.
2) Less quality of choice-When a choice is made, the quality of choice is of less quality for the chooser. Iyengar saw people making poor financial choices the more choices for retirement funds they had.
3) Less satisfaction with choice-In the end people are less satisfied with what they choose.

She offers a few ways to mitigate choice overload and they are:
1) Less is more-Fewer choices leads to more choices being made.
2) Concretization-Make the choices relevant to life
3) Categorization-Group choices together
4) Condition for Complexity-Go from less choice to more choice over time.

These aren't overly complex coping mechanisms and they go well with the brain's tendency to want to group things together for quicker sorting. Prejudices and bias can be negative outcomes of the mental sorting but it is a handy tool. Mental health workers often group mental illnesses into groups to make them easier to treat. It also is handy as a way to explain to other providers what a given patient may be experiencing. If a provider tells that a patient has an "axis II" disorder I know I am working with a personality disorder and can plan appropriately and may know what to look for when I observe a patient's behavior. Because of this, categorization is one of favorite coping mechanism for easily sorting choices and information.

I do believe that less is more. I have never been the type to use 10 words when 5 will do and I see no need to sort through thirty types of shampoo when I know the one I use does the job. Perhaps this is part of other favorite idiom..."keep it simple." I recently decided to buy a new phone. I have a S6 from Samsung but it's a little old, there is a small crack in the screen, and the battery seems to be wearing out a tad. I looked at the S7 as a possible upgrade and it has a few improvements over the S6 but then I thought what I actually do with my phone on a day to day basis. I take a few pictures, argue on Facebook, play a handful of apps while waiting around for things, text, check email, and maybe if I'm unlucky actually have to talk on the phone with someone. The S7 comes with a close to $700 price tag and I while it's cool to have a great phone my current phone still does the job I need it to do. I don't really need the little extras the S7 brings. This is a blend of keeping it concrete and less is more and I tend to think I blend those quite a bit.

Choice is a funny thing and we like to think that more we have to choose from the better we will be. I tend to think that as  Western Society that is free from most existential threats we've decided we have so little to actually fear that we need to obsess over a phone having megapixels. Research suggests we all want SOME choices and it's nice to a variety of teas in my pantry and a couple different shoes to wear to work but there is a tipping point for such things. Iyengar's techniques for dealing with choice can serve as a way to better handle that tipping point.