Analyzing Barry Schwartz's Article 'Tyranny Of Choice'

Jarvin Alcantara
Professor Boyoko
English 101
March 21, 2017
The Problem With Too Many Choices In the world today, there are so many choices readily available. It would make sense that many would see that abundant choice is a good thing for people since it offers more freedom. Choice is better than none but too much choice can make people unhappy. The more options there are to choose from the chances of the consumer actually picking one decrease. Also increased expectation for the particular chosen option is increased, making it easier for the consumer to feel dissatisfied due to the option lacking in any way. Once everything is decided, the consumer can feel further discontent is when they think about the other possibilities if they had chosen
He separates people into maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers are the people who try to pick the best possible choice they can, while satisficers are the ones who pick the choice that is “good enough”. Barry mentions that the more choices are offered means that people are less inclined to choose. Schwartz provides an example of this particular phenomenon as a shopping scenario where the consumer doesn’t buy any gourmet chocolate simply because there was too many choose from. Once the person actually makes a decision they will think about what they have done. Another example used was college students and this time regarding their reflections over the decisions they have made. Students have to pick their classes very carefully and often are stressed out because they do not want to pick the wrong classes/majors because those choices will directly influence their future opportunities. Schwartz says this is one reason why there is an increase of depression in college students. Lastly the overwhelming decisions that have to be made takes away from the well-being of humans because making the right choice takes up a lot of time that people could use to socialize and make themselves
This would be strenuous to the maximizer type person because they would have to gather much information about every possible choice. Regarding purchasing a computer they would have to decide on whether to get a desktop or laptop, which processor to have, how much RAM, hard drive space, etc. There are so many things to consider making it stressful and tiring for the consumer to settle on a decision. Most people would just go back home and put away buying a computer until the “next time” that they will keep putting off. This scenario can be difficult but, can be considered arbitrary compared to the decisions college students have to consider because their choices will determine what kind of degrees, and therefore, the jobs they will have in the future. In the article Schwartz mentions that, “students are eager to have double and triple majors, partly, I know, to pad their resumes, but also because they can’t figure out which discipline they really want to commit to” (804). If the number of choices are somewhat reduced to a manageable number, the amount of time/effort into making a “wise” decision will be more