Imagine that you need milk, so you go to the grocery store to pick some up. When you get to the dairy section, there are so many choices that you are dumbfounded (目瞪口呆).
This phenomenon is known as the paradox of choice and it is becoming a concern in the modern world, where more and more options are becoming easily available to us. The paradox of choice stipulates (规定) that while we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having an abundance of options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice. When the number of choices increases, so does the difficulty of knowing what is best. Instead of increasing our freedom to have what we want, the paradox of choice suggests that having too many choices actually limits our freedom.
American psychologist Barry Schwartz published The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, in 2004. He identified that the range of choices available these days is far greater nowadays; he found that instead of increasing decision satisfaction, having too many options made people less likely to be satisfied with the decision they had made. While freedom is important, Schwartz explains that there is a fine line between having the freedom to choose and being paralyzed (麻痹的) in the face of too many options.
While many studies have demonstrated the more options are available, the less satisfied with the decisions people make, the paradox of choice has been criticized for not having enough concrete and scientific evidence behind it and critics often offer countering evidence, such as the fact that Starbucks, which boasts a menu with hundreds of possibilities and customizations, is an incredibly popular and profitable company.
Barry Schwartz acknowledges that these controversial findings are likely apparent. He suggests that if all the studies based on the ways that options impact choice are combined, we will likely find that sometimes more options leads to increased satisfaction, sometimes it leads to diminished satisfaction.
