The Paradox of Choice: An Ideology that was Drafted by Barry Schwartz

The Paradox of Choice
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The intellectual world has tried answering so many questions throughout history that would have otherwise posed a never-ending continuum of mystery. The weirdest part of it all is that the more these questions are answered, the more the confusion over them grows. The confusion gives birth to a dilemma, which in turn brings more questions. It can be taken as a back-and-forth cyclical movement of things and events.Among the fields most affected by such questions and dilemma, is psychology, itself responsible for helping out in matters concerning thoughts. Quite an irony. Psychology and psychologists have over time come up with theories to explain different psychological and behavioral aspects of human beings. It has enabled man to understand himself, or be understood, much better. However, more and more questions continue being raised in the field. Among them, is the paradox of choice.
The paradox of choice is an ideology that was drafted by Barry Schwartz. Schwartz, in this ideology, was critical of the impact of choices on an individual. In his interpretation, too many choices were not a recipe for better life and more fun, as widely thought to be. Instead, he believed that too many options were the prescription for more depression, confusion and general unhappiness for the people (Schwartz, 2006).Too many choices just brought about a waste of time for people instead of improving the general wellbeing. This perception holds water to some extent, but then also has got various points against its credibility.
Schwartz in his book, for example, looks at all the psychological elements that constitute stress or mental turmoil, which are associated with stress. When an individual is provided with an ideal chance, he or she will in some way, get stressed up. The stress is a culmination of thoughts and anxiety brought about by the inner struggle experienced in the mind, about the impact of choosing one thing over the other and of the resultant effect on an individual. The problem becomes even more vivid when the individual thinks of all the other bad previous choices made and how it impacts on his or her image and perception when comparing to partners or friends who made a different but better choice (Schwartz, 2006).The initially perceived freedom and happiness of the choices get quickly replaced by regret, apathy, and imminent disappointment.
The paradox of choice is best analyzed through the jam experiment that was conducted by Iyengar and Lepper. The experiment featured the selection of various jam brands, which were then categorized into two. The first one had six varieties of jam that were put on display for testing of customers. The other featured twenty-four varieties for the same purposes. The large variety provided by the twenty-four inevitably attracted more people to test (Iyengar & Mark, 2000).The most interesting thing, however, was that customers resorted to purchasing more jam from the six varieties than the twenty-four. Such an observation was enough for Schwartz to conclude that choice is bad. It has negative impacts on the consumer. The lesser the choices as can be seen from the findings, the more the sales. Quite a simple business strategy, apparently. This is, however, a blanket cover that should not, and does not cover all the respective areas where choice comes in. It also avoids the complexity involved in the understanding of what choice entails, from what the consumer wants, and from what products are on show (Iyengar & Mark, 2000).
Schwartz further provides two examples to justify the negative impacts of choice on business. In the first, a large supplier of office products is undergoing massive financial challenges and opts to do some cost-cutting. In the process of cost cutting, some of the products that were being dealt in, previously, are comprehensively eliminated. Therefore, product categories were greatly reduced. The effect of this was that the sales were increased in the entire categories (PBS, 2014).The second example featured a home builder with numerous branches. It opted to reduce the options granted to the client after selection of the preferred house. The reduction of options in these categories was in an attempt also to cut down on costs. Not only did this result in increased sales but also client satisfaction (PBS, 2014).
The only undoing of this argument by Schwartz is that the reasons for the cost cutting were in no way related to the choices. These businesses reduced the categories so as to cut on costs. They didn’t hope for the increase in the sales as it later happened, all they just wanted, was to stay afloat and the business to operate with a bare minimum. It still waits to be seen what the effects could otherwise have been, had the main subject of the change been to focus on the customer choices.
The paradox of choice is supported further by the findings or Rice et.al.(2010).They were carrying out a study on the number and manner in which people signed up for the Medicare, specifically part D prescription drug plan, in the United States. The government was hoping for a huge turnout since it was a program designed to help the people access affordable healthcare. What these researchers found out is that there were more enrollments when the people are provided with fewer options. This points out to the power of limited choices.
While Schwartz has this solid conclusion that choice is bad for the mind, there is also the underlying evidence that choice is good, and another which asserts that choice has no effect. Subsequent research done by completely different psychologists gave contrasting results to the one done by Lepper and Iyengar. For example, Scheibehenne et al. tried carrying out a replica experiment and also did others with a different product such as chocolat...