Thinker

Barry Schwartz

No language had a word for the misery of having too many options until he named it.

Psychologist and Professor, Swarthmore College

Barry Schwartz spent decades at Swarthmore College studying a question that most economists considered settled: whether more choice makes people happier. In 2004, he published The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, arguing that the explosion of consumer and professional options in modern life was producing not satisfaction but paralysis, regret, and depression.1

The Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, Schwartz drew on a distinction introduced by economist Herbert Simon in the 1950s. Simon had identified two types of decision-makers: "maximizers," who search exhaustively for the best possible option, and "satisficers," who choose the first option that meets their criteria.2

Schwartz and his research collaborators demonstrated that maximizers reported lower life satisfaction, more regret, and more social comparison than satisficers, even when they objectively achieved better outcomes.3 The maximizer had more information, more options, and more freedom, yet felt worse about the result.

A foundational experiment by Sheena Iyengar of Columbia and Mark Lepper of Stanford offered shoppers a tasting display of jam. When twenty-four varieties were available, only 3 percent of shoppers made a purchase. When six varieties were available, 30 percent bought a jar.4

30%

Purchase rate when shoppers faced six jam options, versus 3 percent when they faced twenty-four.

Schwartz extended the argument beyond grocery aisles. Career decisions, medical choices, retirement planning, and romantic partnerships all suffered from the same dynamic. When options multiply, people evaluate their choices in terms of missed opportunities rather than realized gains.5 The person who chose well still wonders about the paths not taken.

After The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz co-authored Practical Wisdom with Kenneth Sharpe in 2010, arguing that institutional rules had replaced individual judgment in professions from medicine to education.6 His 2015 TED book Why We Work examined why the industrial model of incentives fails to explain what actually motivates people. He became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 2016.7

Timeline

2000

Iyengar and Lepper published the jam experiment demonstrating that more options reduced purchases.

2002

Schwartz and colleagues published research on maximizers and satisficers in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

2004

Schwartz published The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.

2015

Schwartz published Why We Work, examining the failure of industrial-era incentive models.

Endnotes

1 Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: Harper Perennial, 2004).

2 Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man (New York: Wiley, 1957); discussed in Schwartz, Paradox of Choice, 77-85.

3 Barry Schwartz et al., "Maximizing Versus Satisficing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83, no. 5 (2002): 1178-1197.

4 Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper, "When Choice Is Demotivating," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, no. 6 (2000): 995-1006.

5 Schwartz, Paradox of Choice, 117-140.

6 Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe, Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010).

7 New Philosopher, interview with Barry Schwartz, Dorwin Cartwright Emeritus Professor at Swarthmore College and visiting professor at UC Berkeley since 2016.