The right to choose freely is one of the six basic consumer rights accepted worldwide. It is based on the assumption that when consumers are given an abundance of options for any particular goods or service, they can make a satisfying choice and this will lead to happiness.
But research done by psychologists in the last few years (Scientific American, December, 2004, Journal of Consumer Research, September, 2006) has come to the surprising conclusion that the opposite is true. This research is now again in the news since in the West, more choices than ever are available in the market place, but consumer happiness seems to be declining steadily. There is speculation that psychological problems such as depression which are spreading in society like an epidemic may also be connected to this "choice overload".
Logic suggests that having options allows people to select precisely what makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for misery. It is not clear if some choice is better than none, but more is certainly not better than less. This is especially relevant now in India when consumers are being offered more and more choices in the liberalized (profusion of consumer goods) and privatized (replacement of government monopolies with several private players) economy.
Psychologists have been able to pinpoint the ways in which availability of choice leads to unhappiness. Some of them are as follows:
1. To make the best use of the choice available, one has to read labels, read consumer magazines, make product comparisons and compare notes with other purchasers. Naturally, this takes enormous effort and time. So decision making becomes slower. Research by psychologists, Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College, USA and Rachael Elwork and Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University, USA has found that people who do all this and finally make a decision are nagged by alternatives they did not have time to investigate. They compare themselves with others and if they have done better, the increase in their happiness is small, but if they did worse, the increase in their unhappiness is much higher. They tend to brood over their bad choices. As a result, persons who made the best use of the choices before them were less satisfied with life, less happy, less optimistic and more depressed. The problem becomes even more acute when more choices are available to them. Alvin Toffler, in his famous work "Future Shock", says that as the choice increases, "freedom of choice" ironically becomes the opposite - the "un-freedom".
Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University and Amos Tversky of Stanford University have shown that losses have a much greater psychological impact than gains. A less than the best choice hurts more than the best choice gives a good feeling. When there are plenty of choices, the number of less-than-the-best choices increases and hence one's misery.
Simona Botti (Cornell University) and Ann McGill (University of Chicago) have found that if the difference between the choices is small, the person making the choice feels more strongly that he has made a bad choice and hence is more unhappy.
2. People who make the best use of the choices before them have the highest regret sensitivity, as established by Schwartz, Elwork and Iyengar. With many options available, the chances increase that a really good one is out there, and they feel that they missed it. The more alternatives there are, the deeper is their sense of loss and the less satisfaction they derive from their final decision.
3. A process termed "adaptation" by psychologists is also responsible for unhappiness. When people purchase something new, they feel pleasure, but very soon they get used to it and the pleasure is no longer there (something akin to "Familiarity breeds contempt"). If they put in a lot of time and effort in making the best choice and the pleasure they get from it is gone within a short time, they will feel like a fool for having put in all that effort.
4. When plenty of choices are available, studies have found that people's expectations increase. When expectations are high, the probability of disappointment is also high.
The finding that giving more choices to people is likely to make them more unhappy has shaken one of the corner-stones of the consumer movement. It also has serious implications with respect to our system of elections in which the voter has several choices.
B.V.Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat