October 31, 2005
paradox of choice
“Barry Schwartz, a professor at Swarthmore College, discusses this
distinction at length in his fascinating book “The Paradox of Choice:
Why More is Less.”
Schwartz uses the term “maximizers” to
describe people who must have the very best of everything. Imagine
shopping for a sweater, he says, and finding just what you’re looking
for after an hour or so. You are about to make the purchase when you
remember there’s another store nearby with a reputation for low prices.
You take your chosen sweater back where you found it, burying it under
some other merchandise so that nobody else will “steal” it from you
while you check out the other store.
Even if you find a
better deal on an equally good sweater down the street, you run into a
central problem: How can you ever know you have found the absolute best
deal? You could spend days shopping in your own locale and yet never
know what else might be available elsewhere in the world. The only way
to know is to check out every alternative, an essentially impossible
task. As Schwartz says, “Buying a single sweater could take a
lifetime.”
The opposite of a maximizer is what Schwartz
calls a “satisficer,” somebody who settles for what’s good enough and
stops worrying about whether there might be something better. It’s the
second part of that equation that makes a lasting difference.”