The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less is a book written by American psychologist Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004 by Harper Perennial. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. The book analyses the behavior of different types of people (in particular, maximisers and satisfiers) facing the rich choice. This book demonstrates to us how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.
Don't buy this book if you have already read "Thinking fast and slow" or "Learned optimism". It has nothing to add. The book could have been shortened into a blog post, what the author did instead is to repeat the same concept over and over in all the eleven chapters. A wasted opportunity.
Truly eye-opening, and a great inspiration. Made me change some of my decision making patterns.
This book changed the way I approach (or decide not to approach) many choices in my life. It delves into the psychology of choices, specifically how an abundance of choices can have many negative effects on us, contrary to what we may think. To quote the book, "Having too many choices produces psychological distress, especially when combined with regret, concern about status, adaptation, social comparison, and perhaps most important, the desire to have the best of everything -- to maximize."
While focusing on consumerism, many of the points apply to any time a choice is made, such as careers and even romance. Points are made with fascinating anecdotal evidence, and are clearly explained.
Definitely a great read.
This is one of those books that, if you read the introduction, you pretty much know what the rest of the book is about. As I wrote in my personal blog for this book, "anyhow, once you read the prologue, the author gives such a clear road map that the incentive to read the rest of the book is minimal other than to read the illustrations for his arguments." I borrowed it from the UHD Library. If I recall, the reason I wanted to read it was because another blog I follow made a reference to it.
See the rest of my note on the book here:
[http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/05/booknote-paradox-of-choice.html]
