"Too many choices make people miserable"

A broad stroke, perhaps too broad, but even then, after watching this TED talk by Barry Schwartz, a light bulb went off in my head. Perhaps this is why Mel always wonders if what I ordered tastes better than what he ordered; or why my wife has such great difficulty deciding sometimes; or even why most people don't have an issue when their choices are limited, but there are choices.

Personally, I'd rather have a multitude of choices than being restricted, but as Schwartz said, there might be a "magic number", and I suspect he is right. He has all the statistics to back it up, but even if I ignore them, I can imagine that needing to choose, say, one camera out of 500 different ones, all costing about the same, would be a nightmarish proposition. Picking out a camera from one brand appear to be hard enough to most people new to photography, let alone having that kind of choices.

But that is a pretty big stretch. The number of choices is exponentially bigger when it comes to more common items, like potato chips, laundry detergents, salad dressing, hell even ice-cream. That could really leave people feeling unhappy even when those choices are helping us make a better decision. It's the opportunity cost of not picking the other choice that keeps getting at you.

Thankfully, I don't suffer from that problem quite as much. I make a choice and move on. But now, I have a better idea of why people have such difficulty making certain decisions.

For those of you too lazy to click a link to the talk, you can watch it here.