Tyranny of Choice

Tyranny of Choice

In "The Tyranny of Choice" Barry Schwartz explains how having way too many choices can make people miserable, lead to anxiety and even inability to choose anything. Schwartz divides people into "maximizes" and "satisficers". "Maximizers" are people who tries to research all the options in order to make the best choice and "satisfices" are people, who only look for just "good enough" choice. Having hundreds of choices can be overloading for satisfices, however, the "problem is greatly magnified for maximizers" (802). The greater choice, that "maximizers" are trying to make, increases the "burden of gathering information" and possibility of regretting the decision they make later, which can result not making a decision at all (803). It can also "increases the feeling of missed opportunities" and chances that will "blame themselves when their choices fail to live up to expectations" (803). Schwartz says that when people have too many choices, people get "paralyzed". To illustrate this, Schwartz provide the reader with example of thirty jams and how shoppers are unlikely to buy any. Same thing happens with the 401 (k) plan. The more funds people have to choose from, the more unlikely they choose any, even when not doing so cost them money. It has became overwhelming for college students. Today, students are require to make their own decision about their education. In many cases, students "lack the wisdom to choose intelligently" (804). As a result, students try to have double or triple majors, mainly because "they can't figure out which discipline they really want to commit to" (804). There are a number of students who use university counseling and antidepressants, work at Starbucks for minimum wage and hope to find an answer to the "what should I be when I grow up" (805). Schwartz believes that " by offering our students this much freedom of choice" we fail to provide them with guidance, the students need so much. Schwartz suggests the universities to...