#12. TED Video: Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice

Ye Ji Park / 111053 / 6

Mr.Garrioch

English Composition

September 22 2011

Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice

The talk starts as Schwartz suggests the dogma of modern society about choices and freedom that maximized freedom and welfare is achieved by maximizing choices. This dogma is so deeply embedded in our society so that nobody could be skeptical about. However, Schwartz warns people to be deterred about voluminous list of choices. His grounds for such caution are that “many choices” brings out self-blame, high opportunity cost, and acute disappointment from high expectation.

First, people tend to blame themselves after decision when given a lot of candidates. Assume a guest in blue jeans shop. The clerk asks, “Slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit? Stonewashed or acid-washed? Button fly or zipper fly?” Considering the amount of questions the clerk asks, there will be hundreds, thousands of blue jeans waiting for the guest’s choice. Finally the guest made decision, but later if he finds out a single scratch, he would be virulent toward himself for not making a perfect choice after answering all the questions.

Second reason regarding opportunity cost is lucid; opportunity cost is a sacrifice for the decision—that is, cost of the foregone products after making a choice. “Many choices” means a person should give up more than in “few choices”, thus higher opportunity cost. Final reason, disappointment from high expectation, is aroused because a person believes at least one of the candidates among thousands will be perfect, and expect too much. Schwartz provided a cartoon saying that “Everything was better back when everything was worse”, because when everything was worse, people could get “pleasant surprise” as finding a choice higher than their expectation. He, thus, argues the way not to disappoint is to expect little.



Blue Jeans in Department Store



But it is not only “many choices” that engenders depression; “few choices” do the same, maybe even more than “many choices”. Given few choices, people do blame themselves. Examining few candidates, which at least have one unsatisfying point, people self-denounce for not trying to find more choices. To give an example of blue jeans, a guest in small shop with only two or three jeans would reproach himself for not going to a big department store. Additionally, if the chance of going to the department store is considered as an opportunity cost, the “few choices” have opportunity cost as much as the “many choices”.



Schwartz also articulated the key to happiness is low expectation, but low expectation is also the key to disappointment. What low expectation brings is efface of motivation; consider the blue jeans again. In the small shop, there were only three jeans, which made the guest lose his expectation. The guest then became dispassionate, thinking himself no matter what choice he makes the jean would be disappointing, then chose any jean between three. If the guest still clung to high expectation, he could choose the best among three with fervor, and relish more happiness. In short, contrasting with Schwartz’s view, low expectation can deflate happiness.

I was profoundly interested from this TED video, since this was directly related to the issue I was recently apprehensive of. Thanks to my parent’s financial state and intellectual ability, I was inherited privilege to have wide range of choices. When I was in the ninth grade, I had three choices for my high school entrance—KMLA, foreign language high school, normal high school—while others had only the last chance. I chose KMLA and fortunately entered the school, but spending almost a year in this school, I sometimes felt dubious about my choice. Listening to Economics lecture with forty other students was far from my expectation of ten students discussing freely about financial crisis. Competing with brainy, diligent students reminded me opportunity cost of studying in normal high school. Thinking all these, I scolded myself once in a while.

However, as writing about side-effects of “few choices”, I interpreted my choice of entering KMLA in new perception. If I were not provided financial sufficiency, for example, I would have entered normal high school, I would have missed SAT and AP courses in KMLA and blame myself for not searching scholarship. Envying KMLA students heading to UPenn or Colombia, I would lose motivation to study and spend three years wastefully.

Given numerous choices, I picked up KMLA, and my disturbance toward this choice is “relax of the the haves”. Disappointing over one candidate from scanty list of choices is “resignation of the have-nots”, and despite of Schwartz’s dissuasion, I would rather choose the former.