Have you ever sat down for dinner in a restaurant and, despite the wide range of delicious options
on the menu, found it impossible to choose one and instead ended up ordering the same
thing you might always order?
Or perhaps you have considered changing mobile phone plans but found the range of potential
alternatives so overwhelming that you simply gave up and chose to stay with your current
provider, even if you are sure it is more expensive than other options?
If you can relate to any of these examples you might have been the victim of what the
American psychologist Barry Schwartz labelled the Paradox of Choice.
While an abundance of choice might superficially seem like an inherently good thing, the problem
is, as Carlin Flora warns: “People faced with too many options are likely to throw
their hands and not bother—even when a lot is at stake.” In other words, an excess
of options and choices might lead to paralysis and indecision – paralysis by analysis,
if you will.
Yet more than just relating to how we make day-to-day decisions such as what to order
for dinner or which mobile phone plan to choose, the paradox of choice also highlights a key
reason why the absence of constraints or limits can actually block creative thinking and the
emergence of new and innovative solutions.
Having too many choices may sound like a luxury; but being spoilt for choice can make it harder
to choose. Iyengar and Lepper’s seminal research into consumer behaviour found that
“although having more choices might appear desirable, it may sometimes have detrimental
consequences for human motivation”
So how then does an excess of choices impact on decision making and, consequently, creativity
and innovation?
To find out let’s consider a real life example of how the paradox of choice can work
To do this we setup an experiment which involved asking volunteer participants to choose a
snack that they might like, from first a small selection and second a much larger selection,
so what did we find?
I’m going to go for a smartie.
Very good and why did you choose the smarties?
Erm, I just fancy eating a smartie.
OK
I think.
I might choose that though, can I change?
You can change
Yeah I want that one.
OK
Not that satisfied. I probably would have nothing to be honest.
Perhaps not surprisingly when people were asked to choose from the small selection they
were able to make a choice much more rapidly then when they were asked to select from the
larger selection.
With the smaller selection participants in our experiment took on average 5.7 seconds
to make a choice, compared to 14.5 seconds on average for the larger selection.
Interestingly however while the theory of the paradox of choice might suggest a larger
range of options might also lead to lower levels of satisfaction with the final decision,
this is not quite what we found. In fact the majority of participants in our experiment
actually reported slightly higher levels of satisfaction with their choice from the larger
selection of snacks.
When asked why? They typically responded that the larger selection allowed them to make
a more specific choice and personalised choice.
That’s a lot of choice, maybe about a 6 or… Yeah probably about a 6. So not overly
satisfied!
OK
It’s too much choice!
Oh wow! OK
Oh MY God! There’s so many, oh there’s so many. Oh pickled onion Monster Munch.
OK. Pickled onion Monster Munch.
Returning to the underlining theory, Chernev, Böckenholt and Goodman identified four factors
which are most important for predicting how an excess of choice might impact on decision
making. Specifically, these factors were as follows:
The difficulty of the task and the number of constraints
The complexity of the choices available Decision-maker uncertainty about benefits
of the various options And the overall aims of the decision-making
process.
The thing is, neither boundless freedom nor boundless choice are conducive to effectively
decision making or – critically, creativity and innovation – but can in fact have the
opposite effect. As we found in our small experiment, an excess of choices can make
decision making more complex and time consuming.
So in order for worthwhile innovation to thrive, we might need to consciously look at limiting
the choices available to us. Doing this can help frame our thinking in more effective
ways, improve the quality of our decisions and ensure we avoid the paradox of choice!