The MindFields College Blog

An article in the Times 2 yesterday on how the modern phenomenon of excessive choice (38 choices of milk, 154 different kinds of jam, and 107 varieties of pasta to choose from in one supermarket!) can make us unhappy reminded me of how important having the right amount of control in our lives is and how this knowledge isn’t being used effectively to create and maintain a healthy society.

“Experiments confirm that the less choice we have, the better we feel. Professor Mark Lepper and his team at Stanford University in America found that consumers who tested six jams went on to buy more and feel happier than those offered 24 jams to taste. Another experiment showed that giving students a choice of fewer essay topics made them produce better work.

“This suggests that we thrive when we have less choice,” says Professor Lepper. “Excess choice is paralysis rather than liberation.”

The human need for control is a given, a need we must meet for good health. Fortunately we have innate resources to meet this need: not least a frontal cortex that is able to consider pros and cons of each option and pick one, giving us autonomy and control over our lives and surroundings.

Making a choice requires a particular amount of control. Too much thinking and you can waste hours agonising over insignificant options, too little and you can make the wrong decision. This optimum level of control is crucial to survival - sometimes you need to make a snap decision, sometimes it pays to take a little time over your choices and consider the options.

Having too much choice, having no choice, misusing your resources for making choices or meeting your needs for control in unwholesome ways is unhealthy and can lead to mental health problems.

“The huge number of choices that assault us every day makes many of us feel inadequate and in some cases even clinically depressed,” says Professor Barry Schwartz, a psychologist from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania … There is vastly too much choice in the modern world and we are paying an enormous price for it. It makes us feel helpless, mentally paralysed and profoundly dissatisfied.”

A simple way of making people feel helpless and inadequate is to take away choices entirely or increase the amount of choices to an unmanageable level. Feeling helpless can generate misery and worrying, and you can easily become (temporarily) stuck in a cycle of depression or anxiety.

So .. what can we do to inoculate ourselves against this?

“Choose when to choose,” says Professor Schwartz. “Don’t worry about what type of mobile-phone package to opt for. Pick a sofa from IKEA in 30 seconds and you’ll feel better than if you spend hours researching sofas – because you won’t know what else you’re missing out on.”…

…When it comes to achieving happiness it is better to be a “satisficer” who accepts a good-enough choice than a “maximiser” who always wants to make the best possible decision.”

It doesn’t take long to acclimatize yourself to having less choice. I remember just after I returned from only a couple of weeks travelling in Siberia and Mongolia, where choices of food are significantly less, visiting British supermarket was an overwhelming and sickening experience!

So the next time you feel overwhelmed and rendered helpless by choices, make an effort to bite the bullet, make a quick decision, forget about it and move on with your life!

“We need to live in the moment, appreciate what we have and not think about all the other things that we could choose instead.”

Source.

Posted by: Eleanor