Paradox of Choice

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
by Barry Schwartz
Published 1 Jan 2004

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author. Praise for The Paradox of Choice “The Paradox of Choice has a simple yet profoundly life-altering message for all Americans. Schwartz’s eleven practical, simple steps to becoming less choosey will change much in your daily life…. Buy This Book Now!” —PHILIP G. ZIMBARDO, author of Shyness: What It Is, What to Do About It “In this revolutionary and beautifully reasoned book, Barry Schwartz shows that there is vastly too much choice in the modern world. This promiscuous amount of choice renders the consumer helpless and dissatisfied. The Paradox of Choice is a must read for every thoughtful person.”

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Schwartz offers helpful suggestions of how we can manage our world of overwhelming choices.” —St. Petersburg Times “The Paradox of Choice is genuine and useful. The book is well-reasoned and solidly researched.” —New York Observer “Schwartz has clearly put his finger on a national mood.” —The Christian Century “An insightful study that winningly argues its subtitle.” —Philadelphia Inquirer “Schwartz has plenty of insightful things to say about the perils of everyday life.” —Booklist “The Paradox of Choice is this year’s ‘must read’ book.” —Guardian (London) “With its clever analysis, buttressed by sage New Yorker cartoons, The Paradox of Choice is persuasive.” —BusinessWeek Also by Barry Schwartz The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality, and Modern Life The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life Psychology of Learning and Behavior Behaviorism, Science, and Human Nature Learning and Memory Copyright THE PARADOX OF CHOICE: WHY MORE IS LESS.

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The Paradox of Choice Why More Is Less Barry Schwartz For Ruby and Eliza, with love and hope Contents Prologue. The Paradox of Choice: A Road Map PART I WHEN WE CHOOSE Chapter 1. Let’s Go Shopping Chapter 2. New Choices PART II HOW WE CHOOSE Chapter 3. Deciding and Choosing Chapter 4. When Only the Best Will Do PART III WHY WE SUFFER Chapter 5. Choice and Happiness Chapter 6. Missed Opportunities Chapter 7. “If Only…”: The Problem of Regret Chapter 8. Why Decisions Disappoint: The Problem of Adaptation Chapter 9. Why Everything Suffers from Comparison Chapter 10.

50 Psychology Classics
by Tom Butler-Bowdon
Published 14 Oct 2007

In a global village, we can’t help but wonder why we are not as famous as Madonna or as rich as Bill Gates, and how banal or restricted our own life seems by comparison. If you are a maximizer, The Paradox of Choice could be a life-changing book. If you have put yourself into agonies over “if only,” it could make you see that how satisfied you are with life depends not on the actual quality of your experiences, but whether or not you perceive a gap between how things are and how they might be. Schwartz includes a couple of seven-question surveys so you can determine whether you are a maximizer or a satisficer. He admits that he is a satisficer, and it shows in his writing. The Paradox of Choice is clearly not the result of years of toil to get every line and phrase just right so that it would be the “best possible book” about choice and decision making—yet it succeeds because Schwartz has spent decades thinking about these issues and the impact they can have on our happiness.

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Laing The Divided Self: A Study of Sanity and Madness (1960) 34 Abraham Maslow The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971) 35 Stanley Milgram Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974) 36 Anne Moir & David Jessel Brainsex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women (1989) 37 Ivan Pavlov Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex (1927) 38 Fritz Perls Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951) 39 Jean Piaget The Language and Thought of the Child (1923) 40 Steven Pinker The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002) 41 V. S. Ramachandran Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1998) 42 Carl Rogers On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy (1961) 43 Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (1970) 44 Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (2004) 45 Martin Seligman Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment (2002) 46 Gail Sheehy Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (1976) 47 B. F. Skinner Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) 48 Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, & Sheila Heen Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (1999) 49 William Styron Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990) 50 Robert E.

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While obviously logic and rationality are important, smart people are in touch with all levels of their mind, and trustful of their feelings even when the origins of those feelings seem mysterious. Thinking better, feeling better: Happiness and mental health Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Self-Esteem David D. Burns, Feeling Good Albert Ellis & Robert Harper, A Guide to Rational Living Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness William Styron, Darkness Visible Robert E. Thayer, The Origin of Everyday Moods For many years, psychology was surprisingly little interested in happiness. Martin Seligman has helped to raise the subject to serious study and observation, and his “positive psychology” is revealing through science the sometimes unexpected recipes for mental wellbeing.

The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems-And Create More
by Luke Dormehl
Published 4 Nov 2014

“I often wonder,” he says, “whether matching you up with great people is getting so efficient, and the process so enjoyable, that marriage will [eventually] become obsolete.” What Winchester is expressing is not unique, although it might well be a new phenomenon. In his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, the American psychologist Barry Schwartz argues that the overwhelming amount of available choice in everything from shopping to, yes, dating has become for many people a source of anxiety in itself.21 In terms of relationships, this “paradox of choice” is dealt with by subjecting individual lovers to segmentation: an industrial term that denotes how efficiency can be gained by dividing up and isolating the means of production.

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Taibi 22–24 Kardashian, Khloe 68 Kari 99–103, 105 Kasparov, Garry 29 Keillor, Garrison 28 Kelly, John 127–29 Kelly, Kevin 12 Kelvin, Lord 31 Kerckhoff, Alan 77 Kindle 180, 197–98, 203 Kinect 132 Kipman, Alex 132 Kirke, Alexis 190–92, 194, 197 Knack 32–34 Knowledge Acquiring and Response Intelligence 99 Kodak 129, 216 Koppleman, Lee 134 Kranzberg, Melvin 151, 222 lactoferrin 10 Lake Wobegone Strategy 28–29 Lanier, Jaron 90–91, 199, 216, 239 LargeAndLovely 78 Lasswell, Harold 5 Late Age of Print, The (Stiphas) 221 Latour, Bruno 136, 235–36 law and law enforcement 106–33, 137–60 and age and gender 121–23 and Ambient Law 132, 137, 143–44 and automated judges 160 and bail and parole 119–21 and crime hotspots 110–112 and drunk-driving detection 131–33 and legal discovery 125–28 and “PreCrime” 118–19, 123–25 and predicting judicial behavior 155–60 and predictive policing 107–9, 119 and PredPol 113 and “RealCog” 120–21 and relative poverty 117 and rules vs. standards 141–43 and school students 125 Lawrence, Jennifer 169 LegalZoom 130 Leibniz, Gottfried 139–40 Lessig, Lawrence 139 Levitt, Theodore 217 Levy, David 104–5 Levy, Frank 212–13 Levy, Steven 41 Lewis, Sinclair 186–87 Li, Jiwei 35 Life & Times of Michael K (Coetzee) 203 Life on Screen (Turkle) 57 LinkedIn 27 Liquid Love (Bauman) 82 Liu, Benjamin 89 LivesOn 96–97 London Symphony Orchestra 206 Long Tail, The (Anderson) 56, 191n Lorenz, Edward 171 Love in the Time of Algorithms (Slater) 81 love and sex: algorithms and technology for 61–95 passim, 98–105, 239; see also ALikeWise; BeautifulPeople; Bedpost; eHarmony; FindYourFaceMate; FitnessSingles; Kari; LargeAndLovely; love and sex; “Match”; Match.com; OKCupid; SeaCaptainDate; Serendipity; UniformDating; VeggieDate and celebrity marriages, see celebrity marriages, predicting breakup of genetic matching for 77–78 Warren’s researches into 72–74 and wearable tech 94–5 see also divorce; “Match”; PlentyOfFish Love and Sex with Robots (Levy) 104–5 Lovegety 87–88 Lucky You 167–68 Lust in Space 100 McAfee, Andrew 217 Macbeth (Shakespeare) 191 McBride, Joseph 164n MacCormick, John 212, 222 McCue, Colleen 106–7 McLuhan, Marshall 88 Malinowski, Sean 107–14 Manovich, Lev 177–78 Many Worlds 190–92, 194, 197 maps 134–36 Marx, Karl 11, 137n Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 28 Human Dynamics group in 85 Serendipity project of 85–87 “Match” 62–66 tabulated example of 64 see also love and sex Mattersight Corporation 22–24 Mayer, Marissa 228 Meaney, Nick 166–67, 170–72, 176, 205 Measure of Fidget 32 Medavoy, Mike 162 Medicine and the Reign of Technology (Reiser) 142 Meehl, Paul E. 208–9 Meiklejohn, Alexander 231 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 98–99 Michael (Quantified Self devotee) 13 see also Quantified Self movement Microserfs (Coupland) 16 Microsoft 51–52, 132, 192–93, 237 MIDI 199 Mill, John Stuart 118 Ming, Vivienne 25–27, 29–30 Miniscript 22–23 Minority Report 118–20, 123 Mismeasure of Man, The (Gould) 33–34 Mohler, George 111–12 money laundering 19 Morozov, Evgeny 201–2, 226, 243 Moses, Robert 134 movies, see art and entertainment Mozart, Wolfgang 172, 203–4 Mumford, Lewis 5 Murnane, Richard 212–13 musical dice game 204 Myhrvold, Nathan 182 Nara 46–47, 136 NASA 24 NASCAR 37 Nautilus 14 Negobot 240 Net Delusion, The (Morozov) 226 Netflix 52, 127, 176, 188–89, 228, 236 neural networks 166 illustration of 168 neuroscience 159 new algorithmic identity 55, 58 New Division of Labor, The (Levy, Murnane) 212–13 New Statesman 55 New York Times 40–41, 52, 58, 67, 71 Newton, Isaac 114 Nietzsche, Friedrich 70 Nightingale, Florence 118 Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future (MacCormick) 222 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell) 138, 198 Nudge (Thaler, Sunstein) 137–38 Obama, Barack 189, 225 Odom, Lamar 68 “(Of the) Standard of Taste” (Hume) 199–200 OKCupid 77 On Love (de Botton) 87 On Love (Stendhal) 70 On Man and the Development of his Faculties (Quetelet) 117 online dating, see Internet: dating online shopping, see Internet: shopping via Onomatics 130–31 OptimEyes 20 Orwell 138 panopticon 55 Parada, Sergio 99–100, 102–3 paradox of choice 82–83, 156 Paradox of Choice, The (Winchester) 82–83 Pariser, Eli 47 Parks, Rosa 59 Pascal, Blaise 70 Patterson, James 203 Pentland, Alex 85 personality types 23–25 tabulated 23 Pfizer 58 Pinker, Steven 80–81 Pinkett, Jada 69 Pitt, Brad 69 Plan of Scientific Operations . . .

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Years ago, when Posner was a younger, less experienced judge, he presided over a patent case involving an early application of the kind of targeted recommendation technology Amazon would later carry out using algorithms. In the nascent days of satellite television, American television viewers experienced a seismic leap from having access to around 5 or 6 channels to up to 500. For many people, this was the birth of the so-called paradox of choice. With so many options available, how could they possibly be expected to pick the channel they most wanted to watch? One company came up with an answer. Asking for a single channel in each home, they promised to send questionnaires to everyone who received the channel, asking them to list the type of programs they watched most regularly.

Designing for the Social Web
by Joshua Porter
Published 18 May 2008

To fight this deluge of information, we’re turning more and more to trusted sources, whether they be in our own household or in other CHAPTER 1 THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL WEB social circles. Instead of trying to sort, filter, and weed through endless sources of information, we’re focusing our attention on those we already trust, or those we have reason to believe might be trusted. We don’t have much choice. The Paradox of Choice Barry Schwartz notes an interesting side effect of this problem: the Paradox of Choice.5 He has found that when faced with such an overload we not only fail to make the right choice in many situations, but we often actually get paralyzed and make no choice at all! I remember a friend of mine was shopping for a digital camera several years ago, and decided to utilize several online price trackers to help him find the best model at the best price.

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It is said the average person sees anywhere from 500 to 3000 ads each day6 and an average twenty-year-old has watched 30,000 hours of television.7 It’s hard to go anywhere and not see a plethora of advertisements: a few hours casual use of the web and TV per day and you’ll easily see hundreds of advertisements. 5 Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice. Harper Perennial, 2005. 6 There is considerable debate about how many ads people see per day, with the key issue being how many we notice vs. how many come into our peripheral vision. See more: http://answers.google.com/ answers/threadview?id=56750 7 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber/index.html 11 12 DESIGNING FOR THE SOCIAL WEB Bias, Bias, and more Bias The problem with advertisements isn’t just that they’re distracting, it’s that they’re also biased: they don’t represent a truthful view of the world.

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See also identity management online invoicing application, 70–71 online motivation research, 95 online participation, motivations for, 97–98 online price trackers, 11 open-source manifesto, 56 Orbitz, 92 ordering, aggregation, 136 ownership, conferring sense of, 97, 119–120 P page views, 174–175 pagerank metric, 175 paid-membership sites, 165, 172 Paradox of Choice, 11 participation motivators, 97–124 allowing for reputation, 109–114 attachment to group, 122–124 INDEX conferring ownership, 119–120 emphasizing person’s uniqueness, 105–107 enabling identity management, 98–105 leveraging reciprocity, 107–109 list of, 97–98 promoting sense of efficacy, 114–115 providing sense of control, 116–118 showing desired behavior, 120–121 Passionate Use state, usage lifecycle, ix, xi, 164 passionate users, 47, 123–124, 144, 162 PatientsLikeMe, 17, 102 PDFs, 149 perfectapology.com, 60, 61 permalinks, 36 permanent URLs, 148 personal computer revolution, 9 personal value, 24 photo sharing site, 16, 25.

Willful: How We Choose What We Do
by Richard Robb
Published 12 Nov 2019

This limited view of choice has unfairly loaded it with negative baggage, creating a false impression of paradox and cognitive bias, as the following puzzles demonstrate. Two Puzzles Consider, first, the view that too much choice is unsettling to consumers, as Barry Schwartz argues in The Paradox of Choice. Eating out can be a minefield of choice. A survey of 830 American menus posted online found an average of 114 items offered at each restaurant. Although voluminous menus aren’t new (an 1899 Delmonico’s menu listed thirty-five dishes in the vegetable category alone), it is sometimes criticized as a curse of modern life, a pathology of free markets.11 But if the average consumer dislikes excessive variety, why does it exist?

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While anxiety may accompany choice, consumers evidently want to experience this anxiety and its subsequent release once the choice is made. Are we drawn to movies in which only good fortune befalls the protagonist? Of course not. Enjoying a dramatic plot with a buildup of tension is no more paradoxical than the paradox of choice. The second puzzle is called the “disjunction effect.” It occurs when someone can’t act until he determines his motive, even if all possible motives justify the same action. It is supposed to represent a deviation from rationality. Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir coined “disjunction effect” after conducting the following experiment: undergraduates are told to imagine that they have just taken a grueling qualifying exam.

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On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Translated by Eric F. J. Payne. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1974. ———. The World as Will and Idea. 7th ed. Vols. 1–3. Translated by Richard B. Haldane and John Kemp. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1909. Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. Searle, John. “Philosophy of Society, Lecture 20.” UC Berkeley Philosophy Department, Fall 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yv1pFIxwT4 (accessed February 2, 2019). Seligman, Martin E. P. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being.

What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live
by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers
Published 2 Jan 2010

Odds are that, like the participants in the research, you picked “choice,” as the first three have negative associations.45 We often believe as consumers that the more choice the better, even if it is more of the same. And this feeling relates not just to the hundreds of thousands of brands we have to choose from every day, but also to which car to drive, television to watch, and phone to call on, and even which bathroom to use. As psychologists such as Barry Schwartz have shown in books such as the The Paradox of Choice, choice confuses us not only about how to satisfy our wants, but about what those wants are. This uncertain disorienting effect is what manufacturers wanted to create. If we don’t feel satisfied, satisfaction may be just one more purchase away. By 2005, according to Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College, the average consumer purchased one new piece of clothing every five and half days.46 The more our houses and lives bloat with stuff, the heavier and more trapped we feel.

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Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin Books, 2008). Schelling, Thomas C. Choice and Consequence (Harvard University Press, 1984). Schor, Juliet B. Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner, 2004). ———. The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (Basic Books, 1998). Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (HarperPerennial, 2004). Senge, Peter. The Necessary Revolution: Working Together to Create a Sustainable World (Doubleday, 2008). Sennett, Richard. The Culture of the New Capitalism (Yale University Press, 2006). Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Penguin, 2008).

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Messina, Chris Metro, Marty Michalos, Alex Mid-Course Correction (Anderson) Millennial generation Miller, Arthur Model T car modularity Moore, Charles Moore, Hugh Moran, James Morrow Communications Moskovitz, Dustin My Sister’s Wardrobe NASA Natural Capitalism (Hawken) Netflix Neuberg, Brad Newmark, Craig Newton, Jim New York Times Nicholson, Dave Nike Nissanoff, Daniel Nocera, Joe Nõlvak, Rainer Novak, Annie Obama, Barack obsolescence Ockenfels, Axel Omidyar, Pierre Omnivore’s Dilemma (Pollan) one for life online gaming open source collaboration O’Reilly, Tim Ostrom, Elinor Otto, Louis-Guillaume OurGoods OurSwaps ownership: access vs. in Millennial generation reality vs. feeling of sharing vs. Packard, Vance Pagan Island Palfrey, John Pantera, Kestrin Papanek, Victor Paradox of Choice, The (Schwartz) Parkinson, Cyril Northcote participation: mind-set for collaborative in politics Payback (Atwood) Pears, Kate peer provider peer-to-peer exchanges currencies on facilitating of growing norm of hurdles facing middlemen eliminated in return to trust values of see also collaborative consumption; local markets; specific markets peer user Perez, Carlota Picasso, Pablo Piece of the Action, A (Nocera) plastic Pollan, Michael Porritt, Jonathon power of persuasion Prelec, Drazen product lifecycles product service systems (PSS) barriers to benefits of collective wisdom in and non-ownership replicability of success of types of user loyalty in Progress Paradox, The (Easterbrook) Putnam, Robert Qualman, Erik Randolph, Marc Rashid, Karim recession of 2008 reciprocity redistribution markets fairness and idling capacity lower in reuse encouraged by “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown” (Diderot) Reinhart, James RelayRides renting, rentals see also sharing replication reputation reputation systems reusable goods, value of reuse and recycling benefits of in extended life PSS indirect reciprocity of redistribution markets and trust formed by ReUseIt ride sharing, see car sharing Rifkin, Jeremy Rive, Lyndon Robotics Design Romm, Joe Rooftop Farms Roomorama room rentals Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Why We Work
by Barry Schwartz
Published 31 Aug 2015

How did we get to this tangled place? How do we change the way we work? With great insight and wisdom, Schwartz shows us how to take our first steps toward understanding, and empowering us all to find great work. Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and the author of Why We Work,The Paradox of Choice, and Practical Wisdom. His articles have been published in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Parade Magazine, USA TODAY, Advertising Age, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, Harvard Business Review, and The Guardian, and he has appeared on dozens of radio shows, including Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Anderson Cooper 360, and CBS Sunday Morning.

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“Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work.” Journal of Research in Personality, 31 (1997): 21–33.* About the Author Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania. Schwartz has written ten books and more than 100 articles for professional journals. In 2004, Schwartz published The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, which was named one of the top business books of the year by both Business Week and Forbes Magazine, and has been translated into twenty-five languages. Since it's publication, Schwartz has published articles on various aspects of its main thesis in sources as diverse as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Parade Magazine, The Atlantic, USA Today, Advertising Age, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, Newsday, AARP Bulletin, Harvard Business Review, and The Guardian.

What Technology Wants
by Kevin Kelly
Published 14 Jul 2010

R&D Mag. http://www.rdmag.com/Community/Blogs/RDBlog/50-million-compounds-and-counting/. 286 “it literally was one of a kind”: David Nye. (2006) Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 72-73. 286 paralyzing consumers: Barry Schwartz. (2004) The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Ecco, pp. 9-10. 286 “the less likely they are to make a choice”: Barry Schwartz. (2005, January 5) “Choose and Lose.” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/opinion/05schwartz.html. 287 “even be said to tyrannize”: Barry Schwartz. (2004) The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Ecco, p. 2. 287 U.S. Patent Office by 2060!: Kevin Kelly. (2009) Calculation extrapolated by the author based on historic U.S.

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And once a vehicle was purchased, the owner could customize it further to the point that it literally was one of a kind.” If the current rates of inventiveness continue, in 2060 there will be 1.1 billion unique songs and 12 billion different kinds of products for sale. A few iconoclasts believe this ultradiversity is toxic to humans. In The Paradox of Choice, psychologist Barry Schwartz argues that the 285 varieties of cookies, 175 kinds of salad dressing, and 85 brands of crackers for sale in the typical supermarket today are paralyzing consumers. Shoppers enter the store looking for crackers, see a bewildering wall of cracker choices, become overwhelmed with trying to make an informed decision, and finally walk out not purchasing any crackers at all.

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Deep Progress 74 “more good than evil in the world—but not by much”: Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake. (1996) The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, p. 129. 75 hoping to survive on those crowded shelves: Barry Schwartz. (2004) The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Ecco, p. 12. 75 at least 30 million of them in use worldwide: GS1 US. (2010, January 7) In discussion with the author’s researcher. Jon Mellor, of GS1 US, explains that 1.2 million company prefixes have been issued worldwide. This is the first string of numbers used in both UPC and EAN bar codes.

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters
by Eric J. Johnson
Published 12 Oct 2021

The first shows that changing the number of options has no effect on how people feel about the choice, and the second shows that the effect of adding options is very complicated.6 By complicated, we mean that adding options sometimes hurts but can also help. Barry Schwartz, who popularized the phrase “the paradox of choice” in his book of the same name, reflects on this: In academic literature, there have been a couple of papers published that question how generalizable the choice problem is. Some studies show the effect . . . some of them show the opposite effect—people like more choice, and they end up doing better and feeling better.

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Scheibehenne, Todd, and Greifeneder, “What Moderates the Too-Much-Choice Effect?” 6. Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, and Todd, “Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload”; Chernev, Böckenholt, and Goodman, “Choice Overload: A Conceptual Review and Meta-Analysis.” 7. Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. 8. We could also look at the probability of presenting one of the top two, three, four, etc., or the quality of the best options in the set. The math gets much more complicated than this simple example, but the basic point holds: having more options that are considered carefully increases the quality of the best option in the set.

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Journal of Consumer Research 37, no. 3 (October 2010): 409–25. doi:10.1086/651235. Scheibehenne, Benjamin, Peter M. Todd, and Rainer Greifeneder. “What Moderates the Too-Much-Choice Effect?” Psychology and Marketing 26, no. 3 (April 2009): 229–53. doi:10.1002/mar.20271. Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. HarperCollins, 2004. Shaban, Hamza. “Uber Will Ban Passengers with Low Ratings.” Washington Post, May 29, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/29/uber-will-ban-passengers-with-low-ratings. Sharpe, William F., Daniel G. Goldstein, and Philip W. Blythe.

Elsewhere, U.S.A: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms,and Economic Anxiety
by Dalton Conley
Published 27 Dec 2008

This rising tide of physical (and nonphysical) consumption also drives a sense of alienation and panic among the Elsewhere class. As there is more and more to consume, a sense of satisfaction is ever more difficult to hold on to for any meaningful length of time—something that the psychologist Barry Schwartz points out in his book The Paradox of Choice.10 Just as we always know someone richer, we know that there is a better car, phone, house, or school just beyond our reach. If not now, then in six months. Since the arms race not only expands upward but laterally like brush fire to infect more and more realms of consumption that we once thought safe from invidious comparisons, we suffer from a sense that our lives are out of control.

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Ronna Larsen, “The Skyrocketing Number of Bank Branches,”e-merging Directions, Colliers Turley Martin Tucker Commerical Real Estate Services, at http://www.ctmt.com/pdfs/emergingDirections/BankBranches Skyrocket.pdf. 9. Juliet Schor, “The Social Death of Things,” working paper, 2007. 10. Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). SHOOT THE MOON 1. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961). 2. For this observation I must credit Natalie Jeremijenko’s research in“Share This Book” (PhD diss., University of Queensland, Aust). 3.

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Damon Centola, Robb Willer, and Michael Macy “The Emperor’s Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms,” American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 4 (January 2005): 1009-40. CONCLUSION 1. Elisabeth M. Landes and Richard A. Posner, “The Economics of the Baby Shortage,” Journal of Legal Studies 7, no. 2 (1978): 323-48. 2. Barry Schwartz., The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). 3. Vinod Baya, “Information-Handling Behavior of Designers During Conceptual Design” (thesis, Stanford University, 1996). 4. Here I must confess to years of screaming at my wife for trying to involve the kids in her work life as well as yelling at her to turn off her cell phone during “family time.”

The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You'll Ever Need
by Scott Pape
Published 22 Nov 2016

Think of these fancy options as the Spaghetti Meatball Pizza on the menu at your local chew-and-spew. Sure, it sounds interesting, but you know you're just going to order the same Hawaiian you've ordered for the past 15 years. If that's you, relax — you're normal. There's a scientific term for this behaviour: the paradox of choice. Faced with too many options, the average person will be inclined to choose none. Exhibit A of the paradox of choice? Approximately 90 per cent of the Australian population don't choose where their super money is invested, so they end up in their fund's default option. This is a ‘balanced' fund that balances your money across a mix of assets — generally seven parts shares and three parts cash and fixed interest.

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Dollarmites program domino-ing your debts Donald Bradman Retirement Strategy dumb questions, asking Eichholtz, Piet, on property prices eliminating credit cards emergencies, use of credit cards in emotions, investor behaviour and employment, structure of equities see share investments Eskinazi, Danielle, on buying a home excess payments, selecting Facebook Barefoot Investor page family and friends see also children; partners — buying a house with — happiness and — helping to cope with your death — spending time with family home see houses financial advisors — discussions with — evaluating — locating Financial Counselling Australia financial education programs Financial Information Service Officers Financial Planning Association financial stress — after house purchase — happiness and — levels of finder.com.au ‘Fire Extinguisher’ account — boosting Mojo from — for debts — house deposit paid from — paying off home loan with — payments to — setting up — super contributions from First Home Buyers Grant fixed-rate mortgages Frank from Bendigo (correspondent) freelance work ‘full-service brokers’ funeral, planning for Gittins, Mark and Donna, on building assets ‘Give’ jar goals for employment gold, investing in Golden Ticket to investment government — grants from — pensions policy grandchildren, investing for Grow bucket — pension payments from — setting up growing your wealth Hamilton, Clive, Affluenza Hansen, Barbara, on financial survival happiness — achieving — house location and — income level and — from purchases hard work, joy of Harvard University harvesting wealth Harvey Norman, furniture shopping at health insurance, private HECS-HELP debts Hello Kitty Platinum Plus Visa Credit Card Help Us Grow organisation holding statements home loans see mortgage packages homes see houses Hostplus — ChoicePlus superannuation fund — Indexed Balanced Fund houses — comparing suburbs — downsizing to boost superannuation — prices of — purchasing — refurnishing How Much is Enough HSBC, on poverty in retirement income — doubling — income protection insurance — proportion to live off Index Balanced Fund inflation, rates of ING — Orange Everyday account — Savings Maximisers accounts insurance — financial advice on — income protection insurance — lenders' mortgage insurance — managing — negotiating premiums — offered by credit card companies — private health insurance — repayment for burned house interest rates — compound interest — on credit card debt — maximising investing — on autopilot — borrowing for — for children and grandchildren — in property investment bonds, buying for children iSelect site Jagadish, Chennupati, contributing to Kiva Johnson, Lea, puts children through private school joy of hard work Kardashian, Kim, insurance taken out by Kiva website Law Institute websites Ledger, Matt, on starting over legacy, leaving legal practitioners, advice on house purchases lenders' mortgage insurance listed investment companies, buying shares in Liz (author's wife) — author buys house with — on budgeting — furnishes new house — pays off first flat — shared debit card account longevity, investment and lost superannuation, finding Louis CK, on happiness Mac, April, on Barefoot Date Nights Marks, Lauren, on paying off credit card debts Mates Rates McGuire, Eddie MC Hammer, spending by ME Bank, interest rates Millionaire Next Door, The Mojo bucket — moving into Grow bucket — purpose of — in retirement — setting up ‘Mojo’ account mortgage brokers mortgage packages — costs of — financial advice on — as marketing gimmick — saving money on multimillionaire, living like a myDeductions service MyTax service NAB Bank employment survey National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, on cost of education negative gearing negotiating your debts News Limited cost of living survey Obama, Barack, on clothing decisions OECD retirement study Office for National Statistics (UK) OnePath, on income protection insurance online saver accounts Ouyen, Victoria paradox of choice partners see also ‘Liz’ (author's wife) — financial arrangements between — financial discussion with — helping to prepare for your death part-time work for retirees performance reviews, maximising personal relationships, happiness and pillows, purchase of planting seeds of wealth ‘postcode povvos’ pre-approvals for loans PrivateHealth.gov.au private health insurance product disclosure statements, superannuation funds property, average return on purpose, sense of Rainmaker, on superannuation fees real estate agents realestate.com Relationships Australia rent payments Reserve Bank of Australia retirement, strategy for RP Data online property reports rural house prices Russell, Leanne, ‘Mojo’ account salary sacrifice saving — effect on happiness — for a home deposit — ‘Save’ jar School Banking Program schooling, cost of to parents seeds of wealth, planting Seinfeld, Jerry, on ‘garbage’ self-employment — freelance work — superannuation and self-managed super funds self-storage centres Senate Parliamentary Inquiry into credit cards sense of purpose Serviette Strategy share investments — compared to property — financial advice on — as Golden Ticket — listed investment companies Shiller, Robert, on US property prices Siegel, Jeremy, on gold prices ‘Smile’ account ‘SMSF Lite’ sock purchases ‘Spend’ jar ‘Splurge’ account spouses see family and friends; partners Stanley, Thomas J, The Millionaire Next Door Stapledon, Nigel, on property prices State Trustee, wills drawn up by stocks see share investments ‘stuff’, accumulation of superannuation — financial advice from funds — maximising — need to supplement — ‘SMSF Lite’ — target amount for retirement — tax status of — use of in retirement ‘swinging on the trapeze’ SYN FM radio show taxation — ATO self-reporting system — minimising with superannuation The Millionaire Next Door Tinder approach to finding a financial planner ‘trailing commissions’ trapeze, swinging on Turnour, Ted and Rita, retirement ‘rescued’ by UBank USaver account Uber drivers, retirees as underwear purchases ‘unearned income’ for minors Veda Advantage credit reporting agency Virgin Money waste production wealth — growing — harvesting — planting seeds of — supercharging wills, drawing up work — freelance work — joy of hard work — performance reviews — role of in retirement ‘youth banking package’ Are You Ready to Take the Next Step?

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Published 12 Sep 2016

For more on Dan Gilbert’s ideas on “synthesizing happiness” watch his TED Talk, “The Surprising Science of Happiness,” http://​www.​ted.​com/​talks/​dan_​gilbert_​asks_why_​are_we_​happy and read Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Knopf, 2006). 4. For more on Barry Schwartz’s ideas on choice and choosing watch his TED Talk, “The Paradox of Choice?,” https://​www.​ted.​com/​talks/​barry_​schwartz_on_​the_paradox_​of_choice?​language=en. Chapter 10 Failure Immunity 1. Angela Duckworth’s studies on grit and self-control are summarized in a great article: Daniel J. Tomasulo, “Grit: What Is It and Do You Have It?,” Psychology Today, January 8, 2014, https://​www.​psychol​ogytoday.​com/​blog/​the-​healing-​crowd/​201401/​grit-​what-is-​it-and-​do-you-​have-it. 2.

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The people who had been told they could swap their prints—even though they had not done so—were less happy with their choices than the people who had chosen the exact same prints but had been told the choice was irreversible. It turns out that reversibility is not conducive to establishing reliable happiness with a decision. Apparently, just the invitation to reconsider and “keep your options open” makes us doubt and devalue our choice. But wait…it gets worse. In his book The Paradox of Choice, the researcher Barry Schwartz informs us that this nasty little feature of how our brains handle decisions goes even further.4 When we make a decision in the face of many options, or just while perceiving that there are lots of other options that we don’t even know about, we are less happy with our choice.

The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life
by Joshua Becker
Published 18 Dec 2018

Dress clothes that we might wear if we have the right sort of business meeting. Shoes for more occasions than we’ll ever actually encounter. Men can be clothes hoarders just as much as women. So I have to ask, is all this clothes buying and storing benefiting our lives in any way? In his well-known book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz argued that it is not. He said, “Freedom and autonomy are critical to our well-being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has had before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.”14 His argument, stated throughout the book and reproduced in studies, is that more choice does not mean better living.

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Additionally, an abundance of choice often results in less satisfaction and sometimes poorer decisions. It would seem from everything we’ve been told that more clothes hanging in our closets would lead to a happier life. But psychologically and scientifically, that is simply not the case. In fact, often, more choice leads to less happiness—the paradox of choice. Not to mention the unending frustration of having to keep up with ever-changing trends. Maybe getting our money makes the leaders of the fashion industry happy. But buying excessive quantities of their products isn’t doing the same for us. Running with the Cool Kids Sometimes the reason we buy more clothes than we need doesn’t have to do with external forces or advertisements.

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Leah Melby Clinton, “This Is What the Average American Woman’s Closet Is Worth,” Glamour, June 25, 2015, www.glamour.com/story/average-worth-of-clothing-owned. 13. Rebecca Adams, “Men Think About Sex Less Than Women Think About Fashion, Survey Says,” Huffington Post, June 8, 2012, www .huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/08/fashion-study-online-2012_n_1580663.html. 14. Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, rev. ed. (New York: Ecco Press, 2016), 103. 15. “Surprising Stats,” Simply Orderly, http://simplyorderly.com/surprising-statistics/. 16. Courtney Carver, “Capsule Wardrobe Hacks: 10 Tiny Temporary Tips,” Be More with Less, https://bemorewithless.com/capsule-wardrobe-tips/. 17. 

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
by Winifred Gallagher
Published 9 Mar 2009

Making tough choices about how to spend your time in a busy, busy world is not the only major decision-making quandary that’s endemic to life in the twenty-first century. In our age of endlessly proliferating consumer goods, when entire TV shows are devoted to culling jammed closets, drawers, and garages, deciding what sound system or computer to buy can turn into a major research project. After he wrote The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz got fervent amens from European governments as well as individual readers for insisting that the management of your focus has become one of decision-laden modernity’s major challenges. Many behavioral economists and social psychologists also share his concern about what he calls “the consequences of mis-attention.”

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In one much-cited illustration of the focusing illusion: D. Schkade and D. Kahneman, “Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction.” Psychological Science 9, 1998. p.127. In our age of endlessly proliferating consumer goods: Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice. New York: Harper, 2005. CHAPTER 9: CREATIVITY p.133. William James’s simple experiment on how to improve: William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter XI: “Attention.” Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. p.134. Since the muses of ancient Greece: J. P. Guilford, “The Traits of Creativity,” in H.

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Central Park in choices in Frick Collection in Nietzsche, Friedrich NIMH Nisbett, Richard Nixon, Richard Norman, Don Nureyev, Rudolf nurture brain neuroplasticity and motivation and see also culture obesity epidemic object-orientation Ochs, Elinor Ohio Longitudinal Study old age Omega Institute for Holistic Studies optimism organization orgasm pain chronic panic disorder Paradox of Choice, The (Schwartz) paranoia paraplegics parents: attention drugs and of children with ADHD depressed evening homecoming of productivity and quality and quantity of children’s time with relationships and past Paul, Saint paying attention to someone else to unhappy emotion use of expression W.

The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters
by Diane Coyle
Published 21 Feb 2011

We tend to think of “growth” in an abstract way, but what it means in practice is access to an ever-increasing array of goods and services, and ever-greater command for each individual over how they want to lead their life. The “happiness” movement is dismissive of the freedom and scope for self-definition this implies. Do we really need the freedom to choose one more variety of designer jeans, asks Professor Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice.6 He argues that too much choice makes people unhappier. Chairman Mao too was against choice: he thought everyone in China should wear the same style of clothes. Having professors or bureaucrats decide what items we should be able to buy doesn’t seem like a prescription for a happy society. The increase in consumers’ well-being from the availability of new goods and more varieties over the years—from economic growth, in other words—has been enormous.

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This is sometimes linked to the finding from psychological research that people have a “set point” of happiness, at least partly genetically determined, to which they almost always return.29 The Easterlin Paradox, along with the strong policy conclusions some researchers draw from it, has struck a chord. Robert Frank (in Luxury Fever) argued that high taxes should be used to discourage consumer spending, which won’t buy happiness. Barry Schwartz has written about The Paradox of Choice, whereby the great variety of goods and services available to Western consumers only makes us unhappy (despite the fact that consumers do buy a huge variety of products). The Kingdom of Bhutan has become an icon for its policy pursuit of Gross National Happiness, despite the country’s miserably poor human development indicators.

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Cambridge MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Sandel, Michael. 2009. Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? London: Allen Lane. Sassen, Saskia. 2002. Global Networks, Linked Cities. London: Routledge. Schelling, Thomas. 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: Norton. Schwartz, Barry. 2004. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: HarperCollins. Seabright, Paul. 2010. The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Seligman, Martin. 2002. Authentic Happiness. New York: Free Press. Sen, Amartya. 1990. “More than 100 Million Women Are Missing.”

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models
by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann
Published 17 Jun 2019

One way to do this is to give yourself or others a multi-step decision with fewer choices at each step, such as asking what type of restaurant to go to (Italian, Mexican, etc.), and then offering another set of choices within the chosen category. In addition to increased decision-making time, there is evidence that a wealth of options can create anxiety in certain contexts. This anxiety is known as the paradox of choice, named after a 2004 book of the same name by American psychologist Barry Schwartz. Schwartz explains that an overabundance of choice, the fear of making a suboptimal decision, and the potential for lingering regret following missed opportunities can leave people unhappy. In the context of seeking romantic relationships, people are often reminded that there are “plenty of fish in the sea.”

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This anxiety also arises with smaller-scale decisions, such as when you have young kids and you find yourself finally with an opportunity to go out for the night: Do you go out with friends or with just your partner? Do you go to a nice restaurant or the movies? If the movies, which one? The more choices, the more chance you have for regret later. While we, the authors, are reasonably happy people, we have experienced the anxiety surrounding the paradox of choice with our own life choices. We were lucky to have sold a startup company at a young age, leaving us with essentially unlimited career options. At the time of the sale, Lauren had just accepted a position at GlaxoSmithKline and was content with continuing down that path. However, over time she wondered whether this was the right path and found herself constantly reading job postings.

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But soon he started asking, What next? Should I start another for-profit company? Should Lauren and I start a nonprofit together? Write a book? The choices were and are endless. Don’t get us wrong—we aren’t complaining. We are just acknowledging that we personally sympathize with this model. Hick’s law and the paradox of choice explain downsides of having many choices. There is also a model that explains the downside of making many decisions in a limited period: decision fatigue. As you make more and more decisions, you get fatigued, leading to a worsening of decision quality. After taking a mental break, you effectively reset and start making higher-quality decisions again.

When Einstein Walked With Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought
by Jim Holt
Published 14 May 2018

Euler, a devout Christian, approached the philosophe, bowed, and said very solemnly, “Sir, (a + bn) / n = x, hence God exists. Reply!” Delighted laughter broke out on all sides as Diderot crumpled before this stunning inference. The next day Diderot asked Catherine for permission to return to France, a request to which the empress graciously consented. Newcomb’s Problem and the Paradox of Choice The philosopher Robert Nozick (1938–2002) was famous as the author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This closely reasoned defense of the minimal state, published in 1974, resonated with libertarian types everywhere and became something of a bible for many Warsaw bloc dissidents. But Nozick never thought of himself as a political philosopher.

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in Lapham’s Quarterly; “Truth and Reference: A Philosophical Feud” in Lingua Franca; and “The Riemann Zeta Conjecture and the Laughter of the Primes” in Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge, edited by Damien Broderick (Atlas, 2008). The shorter essays appeared in Lingua Franca, with the exception of “Newcomb’s Problem and the Paradox of Choice” and “Can’t Anyone Get Heisenberg Right?,” which appeared in Slate; “Death: Bad?,” which appeared in The New York Times Book Review; and “The Mind of a Rock,” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine. I am grateful to the following editors: the late Robert Silvers, at The New York Review of Books; Henry Finder and Leo Carey, at The New Yorker; Mary-Kay Wilmers and Paul Myerscough, at the London Review of Books; Jacob Weisberg, Meghan O’Rourke, and Jack Shafer, at Slate; Sam Tanenhaus and Jenny Schuessler, at The New York Times Book Review; Lewis Lapham and Kelly Burdick, at Lapham’s Quarterly; and Alex Star, at The New York Times Magazine and Lingua Franca.

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Moore, Michael moral philosophy moral sainthood More, Henry Morgenbesser, Sidney Morgenstern, Oskar Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas Moscow State University Moscow University Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus MRI scans Mundurukú Murray, Arnold Musser, George Muybridge, Eadweard My Lai Massacre Mystery of the Aleph, The (Aczel) mysticism Myth of the Given Nagel, Thomas Name Worshippers Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds (Schwartz) Naming and Necessity (Kripke) Naming Infinity (Graham and Kantor) Nangoro, King Nation, The National Medal of Science National Physical Laboratory (NPL), British natural history Natural Inheritance (Galton) Nature (journal) nature versus nurture Nazis; atomic bomb effort of; eugenics in racial policies of; World War II code system of, see “Enigma code” Neoplatonism Neugebauer, Otto Neuronal Man (Changeux) neuroplasticity neuroscience NeuroSpin laboratory Newcomb’s problem “Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice” (Nozick) New Left New School Newton, Isaac; gravitation theory of; on instantaneous velocity; time concept of New York, City University of New York Cotton Exchange New Yorker, The New York magazine New York Times; Magazine New York University Nietzsche, Friedrich Nightingale, Florence Nixon, Richard Nobel Prize Noether, Emmy; beautiful theorem of noncontradiction, law of nonlocality Non-standard Analysis (Robinson) nonuniqueness problem Northwestern University Not Even Wrong (Woit) Nozick, Robert Number Race, The (computer game) Number Sense, The (Dehaene) numerical cognition Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles) Omega Point “On Being the Right Size” (Haldane) On Bullshit (Franklin) On the Heavens (Aristotle) “On the Hypotheses Which Lie at the Foundation of Geometry” (Riemann) On Lying (Augustine) On the Mountains of the Caucasus (Ilarion) Oppenheimer, Robert optics Oregon, University of On the Origin of Species (Darwin) Orwell, George Ouspensky, P. D. overconfidence Oxford University Pais, Abraham panpsychism Parade magazine paradoxes; of choice; of infinitesimal; in string theory; Zeno’s Pareto, Vilfredo Parfit, Derek Paris, University of parity, conservation of Parmenides particle physics Pascal, Blaise Paul, Saint peintres cubistes, Les (Apollinaire) Peirce, C. S. Pennsylvania, University of Penny, Laura Penrose, Lionel Penrose, Roger Penrose, Sean Perelman, Grigori Perimeter Institute perspectivism Péter, Rózsa Phaedrus (Socrates) Phantoms in the Brain (Ramachandran and Blakeslee) Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century (Soames) Philosophical Explanations (Nozick) “Philosophy of Mathematics” (Putnam) photoelectric effect Physics of Immortality, The (Tipler) Piaget, Jean Pica, Pierre Pinker, Steven Planck, Max Planck length Plant, Sadie Plato Platonism; fourth dimension in; of Frenkel; of Gödel; of Mandelbrot; of Name Worshippers; prime numbers in Playing with Infinity (Péter) “Plea for the Mathematician, A” (Sylvester) Plotinus Podolsky, Boris Poincaré, Henri Polanyi, Michael Popper, Karl Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A (Joyce) positivism Posner, Michael postmodernism post-structuralism Powers, Thomas pragmatism prime numbers Princeton University; Kripke at; string theory physicists at; Turing at Principia (Newton) Principia Ethica (Moore) Principia Mathematica (Russell and Whitehead) probability Prony, Baron Gaspard Riche de proper names, theory of Protagoras Proust, Marcel pseudoscience psychology, evolutionary Ptolemy Pulitzer Prize pure mathematics Putnam, Hilary Pynchon, Thomas Pythagoras Pythagoreans Quakers quantum physics; Dyson on; Einstein’s misgivings about; entanglement of particles in; founders of (see also Bohr, Niels; Heisenberg, Werner); Frenkel’s interest in; relativity and; space-time in; string theory and Question of Ethical and Religious Meaning, The (Smith) Quetelet, Adolphe Quine, W.

The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love With the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams
by Tommy Baker
Published 18 Feb 2018

Indecision costs us more than we can ever imagine. This alarming cost includes time, energy, resources, stress, and the constant wasted bandwidth of overthinking. As we move forward with our dreams, we’re already overwhelmed with logic, reasoning, and trying to figure out “how.” Barry Schwartz, psychologist and author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (Schwartz 2016), studied the correlation between endless choices and happiness. He concludes that indecision may be making us miserable, saying: “Unfortunately, the proliferation of choice in our lives robs us of the opportunity to decide for ourselves just how important any given decision is.”

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June 2008, Harvard Magazine. https://harvardmagazine.com/2008/06/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination Ryniec, Tracey. “Applying Warren Buffett’s Investing Lessons Today,” Yahoo Finance, October 4, 2017, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/applying-warren-buffett-apos-investing-014001335.html Schwartz, Barry. 2004. The Paradox of Choice. New York: Ecco. State of Obesity, The. “Obesity Rates & Trends Overview,” https://stateofobesity.org/obesity-rates-trends-overview/. Accessed November 24, 2017. Vishwanathan, Sai Preethi, Levi Malott, Sriram Chellappan, and P. Murali Doraiswamy. 2013. “An empirical study on symptoms of heavier Internet usage among young adults.”

Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World
by Andrew Leigh
Published 14 Sep 2018

In 2000, a supermarket experiment found that customers were more likely to buy a new kind of jam when they were offered a choice between six jams than if they were offered twenty-four jams.42 The paper has since been cited thousands of times and used as evidence that many of us are overwhelmed by choice.43 The research also spurred dozens of follow-up experiments on ‘the paradox of choice’. A decade after the initial study appeared, a team of psychologists collated as many of these replication experiments as they could find.44 Among the fifty replication studies, a majority went in the opposite direction from the original jam choice experiment. Averaging all the results, the psychologists concluded that the number of available options had ‘virtually zero’ impact on customer satisfaction or purchases.

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Olds, David 211 ‘once and done’ campaign, and Smile Train aid charity 158 O’Neill, John, and Black Saturday 2009 13–14 O’Neill, Maura 210 Oportunidades Mexico 117 see also President Vincent Fox Oregon research on health insurance 42 parachute study, and randomised evaluation of 12 Pare, Ambroise, and soldiers’ gunpowder burns 22–3 parenting programs 68–9 and Chicago ‘Parent Academy’ 9 and Incredible Years Basic Parenting Programme 69 and randomised evaluations 70 ‘Triple P’ positive parenting program 68–9 ‘partial equilibrium’ effect 191 Peirce, Charles Sanders 49–51 Perry, Rick 150–1 Perry Preschool 66–8, 71, 169, 191–2 see also David Weikart; Evelyn Moore ‘P-hacking’ 195–6 Piaget, Jean 66 Pinker, Stephen 177 placebo effect 10, 29–31, 34, 138, 192 and John Haygarth 23–4 placebo surgery 18–21 see also sham surgery Planet Money 103 policing programs 91–4, 209 ‘broken windows policing’ 209 and ‘hot spots’ policing 93 and ‘problem oriented policing’ 94 and randomised evaluations 94 see also criminal justice experiments; Lawrence Sherman; Patrick Murphy; Rudi Lammers political campaign strategies and Benin political campaign 160 and control groups 148, 155 and ‘deep canvassing’ 163–4 and Harold Gosnell 148–50 and lobbying in US 162 and online campaigning 154–5 and political speeches 160–1 and ‘robocalls’ 152 and Sierra Leone election debates 161 and use of ‘social pressure’ 151–2 see also Get Out the Vote Pope Benedict XVI 119 ‘power of free’ theory 112 pragmatism 50 see also Charles Sanders Pierce ‘problem oriented policing’ 94 Programme for International Student Assessment 73 Progresa Mexico 117–18 see also President Ernesto Zedillo Project Independence 60–1 see also Ben Graber; Judith Gueron; Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) Project STAR experiment 81 Promise Academy 78–9 Prospera Mexico 118 psychology experiments 50–1, 143, 170, 177, 196 see also Charles Sanders Pierce; Joseph Jastrow ‘publication bias’ 199 Pyrotron 14–15 see also Andrew Sullivan Quintanar, Maricela 38–40 Quora 131 RAND Health Insurance Experiment 41, 169 randomised auditing 174–5 randomised trials see also A/B testing and ‘anchoring’ effect 133 and the book of Daniel 22 and Community Led Sanitation 116 and control groups 13, 67–8, 74, 78, 82 and data collection 171–2 and the driving licence experiment 109 and the ‘experimental idea’ 194 fairness of 37, 100, 177, 185 and ‘fixed mindset’ 6 and ‘general equilibrium’ effect 191 and the ‘gold standard’ 194 and ‘growth mindset’ 6 and ‘healthy cohort’ effect 12 and Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO) 6 and Kenyan mini-bus driver experiments 115–16 and ‘natural experiments’ 193 and N-of-1 168–9 and the No Child Left Behind Act 210 and ‘the paradox of choice’ 195 and ‘partial equilibrium’ effect 191 and ‘publication bias’ 199 and replication of 90, 124, 195, 197–8 and sex education 119–20 and single-centre trials 197 and ‘virginity pledges’ in the US 46–7 randomistas, Angus Deaton Nobel laureate on 12 Read India 188 see also Rukmini Banerji Reagan, President Ronald 59, 151 Registry for International Development Impact Evaluations 199 replication 90, 195, 197–8 ‘restorative justice conferencing’ 84 restorative justice experiments 85–6, 182 Results for America 211 Rhinehart, Luke, and The Dice Man 180 Roach, William 52 ‘robocalls’ 152 Romney, Mitt 147 Rossi, Peter 190 ‘Rossi’s Law’ 190, 206 Rothamsted Experimental Centre 53 Rudder, Christian 130 see also OkCupid Sachs, Jeffrey 121 Sackett, David 27, 206 Sacred Heart Mission 36 Salk, Jonas 168 Salvation Army’s ‘Red Kettle Christmas drive 157 Sandburg, Sheryl 144 Saut, Fabiola Vasquez 110 see also Acayucan road experiment ‘scaling proven success,’ and ‘Development Innovation Ventures’ 210 Scared Straight 7–8, 94, 98–9, 189 see also Danny Glover; James Finckenauer Schmidt, Eric, and Google 143 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 75, 173 Science 163 ‘Science of Philanthropy Initiative’ 159 scurvy treatment trials 3–5, 16 see also Gilbert Blane; James Cook; James Lind; William Stark Second Chance Act 210 Seeger, Pete, and ‘The Draft Dodger Rag’ 42 Semelweiss, Ignaz 25 Sesame Street 63–5, 83 see also Joan Cooney sex education 119–20 sham surgery trials 19–20, 182 and ‘clinical equipoise’ 21 Sherman, Lawrence 91–4, 101 ‘Shoes for Better Tomorrows’ (TOMS) 113–15 see also Blake Mycoskie; Bruce Wydick Sierra Leone election debates 161 see also Saa Badabla SimCalc, and online learning tools 77 ‘single subject’ trials 168–9 see also N-of-1 Siroker, Dan 148 Sliding Doors 9 Smile Train aid charity, and ‘once and done’ campaign 158 social experiments large-scale 41 social field experiments and control groups 37, 39–41, 139 and credit card upgrades 132–3 and pay rates 136–7 and retail discounts 133 and ‘split cable’ techniques 139–40 and Western Union money transfers 130 social program trials and Kenyan electricity trial 110 and smoking deterrents 47–8 see also Acayucan road experiment; neighbourhood project social service agencies 36, 69 ‘soft targeting’ 36 ‘split cable’ technique 139–40 St.

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Petersburg Times 60 Stark, William 16 Stewart, Matthew, and The Management Myth 138 Stigler, Stephen 50 Street Narcotics Unit experiment 92–3 streptomycin trial 56 see also Austin Bradford Hill Sullivan, Andrew, and Pyrotron 14 Suskind, Dana 70 Syed, Matthew 142 teacher payment trial 111 see also Karthik Muralidharan Telford, Dick 201–2 text messages, and use of 9, 78, 82, 123, 154 textbook trial 123–4 see also Karthik Muralidharan The Battered Women’s Movement 89 the book of Daniel 22 ‘the brevia’ and ‘the scrutiny’ 181 the ‘gold standard’ 194 The Lancet 24, 55, 120 The Matrix 30 ‘the paradox of choice’ 195 the placebo effect see placebo effect ‘the Super Bowl impossibility theorem’ 140 Thirty Million Words initiative 79–80 ‘three strikes’ law’ 99, 101 ‘Triple P’ positive parenting program 68–9 ‘True Love Waits’ program 47 Trump campaign 154 Tseng, Yi-Ping 37 see also ‘Journey to Social Inclusion’ UK Department for International Development 103 unemployment 36, 44–6, 78, 103 see also German government unemployment incentive; job training programs; ‘universal basic income’ ‘universal basic income’ 46 University of Chicago, and ‘Science of Philanthropy Initiative’ 159 University of London 54 University of Queensland, and ‘Triple P’ positive parenting program 68 University of Wollongong 187 US Agency for International Development 103, 210 US Behavioural Insights Team 186 see also Elizabeth Linos US Congressional Budget Office 194 US National Academy panel 100 US Police Foundation 89 ‘verbal bombardment’ and Perry Preschool 67 Vienna General Hospital 24–5 see also Ignaz Semmelweis Vietnam war draft 42–3 Virgin Atlantic Airways 136 ‘virginity pledges’ in the US 46–7 Wagner, Dan 159 Waiting for Superman 79 Washington Post 7 Washington Times 60 Weikart, David 66–7, 71 West Heidelberg centre 71 What Works Clearinghouse 76–7, 208 Western Union 130 Wilson, James 184–5 Wootton, David 26, 203–4 and Bad Medicine 26 World Bank 103, 111 World Health Organization 112–13, 115, 199 World Medical Association 186 Wydick, Bruce 114–15 Yale University, and Innovations for Poverty Action 123 YouWiN!

Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations
by Garr Reynolds
Published 14 Aug 2010

Having many choices is generally a good thing, but it’s up to us to exercise restraint. Learn to love constraints Our professional lives have become complicated by more and more choices, features, and options. But we know through experience that no freedom is to be found purely in the maximization of choices. In The Paradox of Choice (Ecco, 2003), author Barry Schwartz makes a similar claim. He says that having an unlimited array of choices and few constraints is not liberating or enabling—it is, instead, a burden and even bondage. Schwartz, speaking from the consumer’s point of view, believes that, in many cases, the abundance of choice does not make us more productive or improve our decisions.

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Edwards, 234 depth, creating sense of, 173, 182–183 The Design Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation (Neumeier), 10 Desmond, Paul, 244–245 digital cameras, 120 digital storytelling, 95 dimensions, of images, 112 distortion, of images, 114 divided-bar graphs, 140 documents, vs. slide, 136–137 dominance, in creating design priority, 187 dpi (dots per inch), resolution, 103 Duarte, Nancy, 12, 237 E edge of visuals, 167–168 Eisner, Will, 95 The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation (May), 234 embedded video, 123, 126 Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (Norman), 11 emotions being aware of emotional component of design, 18 colors and, 79–80 emotional content of visuals, 27 visual and graphics communicating, 11 empathy, designer focus on client needs, 18 empty space. see white space Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), 107 enso (circle of enlightenment), 172 Envisioning Information (Tufte), 77 EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), 107 essence, 66, 135 F Few, Stephen, 145–147 A Field Guide to Digital Color (Stone), 76 file types, images, 106 Film Grain effect, in PowerPoint, 14 Flip Ultra HD, 123 focus. see purpose and focus fonts, 46. see also typefaces foregrounds, 170–171, 183, 188 form (rules of structure), 27 Franklin Gothic typeface, 43–45 Frederick, Matthew, 162 freedom, vs. constraint or structure, 23–24, 174 Frutiger typeface, 43–45 fukinsei (asymmetry or irregularity), 207 full-bleed images, 100–102, 113 Futura typeface, 43–45 G Gapminder software, 149 Garamond typeface, 43–45 Gerard, Alexis, 95–96 gestalt (the power of the whole) closure as means of engaging viewers, 172 depth implied, by white space, 173 helping viewer’s eyes flow smoothly across design (continuation), 171–172 law of proximity, 201 overview of, 169 power of implied space, 173 space as ground, 170–171 value of constraints, 174 GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), 107 Gill Sans typeface, 43–45 Godin, Seth, 10 Going Visual (Gerard and Goldstein), 95–96 Golden Hours, for shooting landscape photos, 119 Goldstein, Bob, 95–96 Graph Design for the Eye and Mind (Kosslyn), 129 Graph Design IQ Test (Few), 145–147 Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative (Eisner), 95 Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), 107 graphs. see charts and graphs gray, emotional communication of, 80 green, emotional communication of, 79 grids, providing structure with, 202–204 ground principle, in Gestalt theory, 170–171 H Hagen, Steve, 16, 174 harmony bento, 205 checklist for, 210 color and apply harmony rules, 89 connecting elements via visible or implied line, 201 creating harmony with color, 66 creating harmony with typefaces, 47 grid for providing structure, 202–203 overview of, 197 rule of thirds, 204 similarities creating sense of, 199 simplifying for unity, 198 visual cues, 200 Zen and, 22 Helvetica typeface, 43–45, 50–51 Hiroshige, 183 Hoffmann, Eduard, 50 horizon, in landscape photos, 120 hue, 66–67, 76 I ikebana (flower arranging), 23, 131, 160–161 images complementing with text, 52–53 cropping, 104 file types, 106 full-bleed, 100–102 making own, 117 picking colors based on, 84–85 power of photographs, 98–99 resolution settings, 103 text placement on, 54 things to avoid, 112–115 use of human images, 189 improvement learning by observing, 235–236, 242–243 learning from billboards, 237 learning from brochures and printed materials, 240–241 long-term, 234 tips for, 244–245 Insert Video/Sound option, 123 iStockphoto, CopySpace, 111 italic faces, in font family, 46 J JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), 106 K kaizen (improvement), 234 Kakuzo, Okakura, 185 kanso (simplicity), 207 Kawasaki, Guy, 228 Kelby, Scott, 117–120 kerning, 39 Keynote color wheels in, 67 Presenter’s Dashboard, 58 searching for color themes, 90 static nature of presentations with, 150 video in, 123 Kobayashi, Keiko, 239 Kosslyn, Stephen M., 129, 188 Kuler, 86–87, 90 Kwintner, Daniel, 238 L labels, using color as, 78 landscape photos, 119, 120 leading, 39–41 Learning to See Creatively (Peterson), 175 leave behind materials, for distribution following presentations, 58 letter spacing, 39–40 light backgrounds, 82–83 color values (luminance), 68 differences in lightness create shape, 76 lighting, 82, 119 line graphs, 141 line spacing controls, 39–41 Lithoglyph, 90 Loori, John Daido, 5 luminance (value), 68–69, 77 LumiQuest, Soft Screen, 119 M ma (use of space in art), 160 Maeda, John, 21, 135 Mayer, Richard, 192 McKee, Robert, 181 McWade, John, 108–110 Medina, John, 97 Miedinger, Max, 50 Miller, Paul, 148 Mondrianum, from Lithoglyph, 90 monochromatic color combinations, 73, 89 motion, for making a point, 192–194 multimedia, 10, 93, 95 Multimedia Learning (Mayer), 192 N nature, perceiving differences in, 181 negative space. see white space Neumeier, Marty, 10 Newell, Patrick, 222 Nishibori, Kotaro, 24 Norman, Donald, 11 ntan, 64 O “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”, 183 orange, emotional communication of, 79 P package design, 238–239 The Paradox of Choice (Schwartz), 174 Peters, Tom, 9 Peterson, Bryan, 175 photographs communicative nature of, 108 finding, 111 Kelby’s tips for, 117–120 power of, 98–99 Picture Color menu, 14 picture graphs, 142–143 pie charts, 138 Pink, Daniel, 9 pink, emotional communication of, 79 pixilation, of images, 113–114 placement, of images, 113 planning design, role of sketches in, 12 PNG (Portable Network Graphics), 106 point sizes, for text, 36, 40 pop-up flash, 119 Portable Network Graphics (PNG), 106 portraits, 118–119 Powell, Richard, 131 The Power of Simplicity (Maeda), 135 PowerPoint, 12–14 color wheels in, 67 ineffective documents, 136 Presenter Tools, 58 searching for color themes, 90 static nature of presentations with, 150 video in, 123 Poynor, Rick, 43 Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, 16 presentations design and delivery when stakes are high (Rose), 56–59 designing text for last row, 34 importance of, 5, 7 lighting for, 82 making the text big enough, 35–37 practicing, 15 quality of, 10 slide use in, 109 value of picturing, 108 Presenter’s Dashboard, Keynote, 58 Presenting to Win (Weissman), 56 printed materials, learning from, 240–241 priority, in design dominance and structure used for, 187 guides for directing eyes, 190–191 overview of, 186 preference for human images, 189 salience in, 188 prompts, use in presentations, 58 purple, emotional communication of, 80 purpose and focus contrast elements for, 182–183 depth created by large foreground elements, 183 differences providing context and meaning, 180 dominance and structure used for, 187 establishing strong priority in design, 186 guides for directing eyes, 190–191 human images used for, 189 motion for making a point, 192 overview of, 179 perceiving differences in nature, 181 salience, 188 storytelling and, 180–181 tokonoma (art of focal point), 184–185 transitions for showing change, 193–194 variety and depth in, 182 Q QuickTime, 123 R Rahim, Dr.

Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
by John de Graaf , David Wann , Thomas H Naylor and David Horsey
Published 1 Jan 2001

You can reach for tomato juice, confident that you’re getting vitamins and antioxidants and only fifty calories per serving. But don’t look at the “sodium” column—you won’t be able to allow yourself any more salt for the rest of the day without feeling guilty. Psychologist Barry Schwartz, in his book The Paradox of Choice, warns that having so many choices increases our anxiety and is likely to leave us less happy. He points out that many of us are regularly troubled by the sense that we may have made the wrong choice, that we could have gotten a better product or a lower price. So many choices. So little time.

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Schor, Juliet. The Overworked American. New York: Basic Books, 1992. ———.The Overspent American. New York: Basic Books, 1998. ———.Born to Buy. New York: Charles Scribner, 2004. Schut, Michael, ed. Simpler Living, Compassionate Life. Denver: Living the Good News, 1999. Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Ecco Press, 2004. Schwarz, Walter, and Dorothy Schwarz. Living Lightly. Charlbury, UK: Jon Carpenter, 1998. Segal, Jerome. Graceful Simplicity. New York: Henry Holt, 1999. Seiter, Ellen. Sold Separately. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 1995. Sessions, George, ed.

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See fulfillment media Adbusters, 215–19 children and the, 55–59, 219–20 literacy, 219–20 product placement, 156 television, 29, 150, 154–55, 216–19, 231 See also advertising; marketing; PR Meyer Friedman Institute, 45–46 Miringoff, Marc, 70 Molnar, Alex, 60 Monsanto, 164 Moore, Michael, 207 Moran, Virginia, 211 Morris, William, 140 Mother Jones (magazine), 83 Mother Teresa, 74 Motivation in Advertising (Martineau), 154 N Nader, Ralph, 226, 231 National Consumer Finance Association ad, 149 National Retail Foundation, 13 Natural Capitalism (Hawken), 230 nature abuse of, 90–91 alienation from, 188–91 Bioregion Quiz, 190 ecophobia, 192 living systems, 243–44 participating in, 192–96 as treatment, 6, 193–96, 243–44 See also environmental impact Natural Step movement, 230 Netherlands, 230, 232–33 New York Times, 27 Newton, Issac, 102–3 Nickel and Dimed (Ehrenreich), 85 No Child Left Behind Act (2002), 61 Norman, Al, 67–68 Norris, Margaret, 86 Northwest Earth Institute, 186, 208 Nussbuam, Karen, 43 O O’Connor, Terrance, 205 Oetjen, Marielle, 19 overwork, 43–45 P Pacific Islanders, 122 paper industry, 91–93 Parade (magazine), 3–4 Paradox of Choice (Schwartz), 42 Parker, Thornton, 22 Pauly, Mike, 49–50 PBS, 219 personal choice Affluenza Self-Diagnosis Test, 174–76 ecological footprint and, 96–97, 241 environmental impact of, 198–202, 204–5 free time and, 39–41, 42–45, 225–27 fulfillment and, 74, 235–37 lifestyle changes, 119, 178–80, 197–202, 204–5 policy and, 199–200, 222 voluntary simplicity, xi, 183–85 workweek reduction, 224–25 See also fulfillment Pew School of Journalism poll, 69–70 Pinkerton, David and Mary, 104 Place for Us (Barber), 207 policy campaign-finance reform, 231 commercialization and, xi, 231 corporations and, 60, 230 deregulation, 81–82 employment, 223–28 extended producer responsibility laws, 202–3, 230 graduated retirement, 227–28 international innovations in, 231–33 key areas of action, 222 mandated product efficiency, 199–200 sustainability and, 232–33, 244–45, 247 taxes, 229–31 political common ground, xvi–xvii, 52–53 “Politics of Well-Being” movement (UK), 231–32 Porter, Lana, 194–95 Portland (OR), 186 “possession overload,” 39 Potomac Mills mall, 14, 17 poverty, 82–83, 84–87 Power of Clan (Wolf), 64 Poyntz, Juliet Stuart, 142 PR (public relations) corporate agendas and, 164–65, 166–67 front groups, 163–64 journalists and, 168–69 pervasiveness of, 161–62 quality of information, 165–66, 170 Proctor & Gamble, 162 products energy-efficient, 197–200 environmental impact of, 202–4, 245, 246 extended producer responsibility laws, 202–3, 230 paper industry, 91–93 planned obsolescence, 148 sustainability and, 245, 246 See also automobiles progress, 16–17, 28, 37, 41–45, 130 PRWatch, 164 Puritans, 133–34 Putnam, Robert, 65–66, 69 Q Quakers, 134 R Rathje, William, 37 Reagan, Ronald, 82, 153–54, 187 Redefining Progress, 7, 239–41, 286 Responsible Wealth, 213 retail chains, 66–68 Rifkin, Jeremy, 3, 139, 162 “Right to Be Lazy” (Lafargue), 140 Robin, Vicki, xi–xiii, 179–81, 235–36 Robinson, John, 44, 47 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 143 Roosevelt, Theodore, 141 Ropke, Wilhelm, 78–79, 151, 159 Roy, Dick, 185–86, 208–9 Roy, Jeanne, 185–86 Royce, Beckett, 17 Ryan, John, 142 Ryan, Richard, 77, 115–16 S Sakaiya, Taichi, 117 Satisfaction Guaranteed (Strasser), 148 Sawe, Caroline, 58, 75 Schenk, David, 41 Schifrin, Daniel, 156 schools, 59–61, 231 Schor, Juliet, 22, 29, 42–43, 44, 55, 62, 82, 224, 232 Schut, Michael, 185 Schwartz, Barry, 42 Seattle (WA), 220, 237–39 Second Vermont Republic, 222 Seeds of Simplicity, 184 self-actualization.

The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter
by David Sax
Published 8 Nov 2016

“You engage with someone by finding out how someone else’s words made them feel! That’s ultimately not translatable to an algorithm.” As much as we believe that limitless selection is desirable, we actually crave limits as shoppers. According to scientists such as Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, we are paralyzed and even terrorized by endless options, which is exactly what Amazon gives us. Choosing from every book ever published seems like a dream, until you’re forced to sift through hundreds of thousands of titles on your Kindle, and all the reviews attached to them, hoping to find something good.

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Harvard Business Review, August 21, 2014. “The Rise of the Independent Bookstore.” Huffington Post Books, May 29, 2015. Ruiz, Rebecca. “Catalogs, After Years of Decline, Are Revamped for Changing Times.” New York Times, January 25, 2015. Salmon, Kurt. “The Store Strikes Back.” KurtSalmon.com, March 8, 2013. Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Harper, 2005. Streitfeld, David. “Selling E-Commerce While Avoiding Amazon.” New York Times, June 5, 2015. ———. “To Gain the Upper Hand, Amazon Disrupts Itself.” New York Times, December 1, 2014. Thau, Barbara. “Beware, Retailers: Ignore Millennials at Your Own Risk.” Forbes, October 10, 2014.

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See virtual schools online selection, 130 online selling, 129 online shoppers, 134 Onorati, Christine, 140 Ooey Gooey, 182 Oppenheimer, Todd, 187 Orchard, Rob, 106, 107 Ordanini, Andrea, 39 Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, 184–185 Organized Mind, The (Levitin), 37 Orpilla, Primo, 211, 212, 213, 220 outsourcing, 154, 156, 165, 192 OYE, 16 Pagni, Mark, 52, 56–59, 62, 63–64, 65–66, 69, 73–74 PalmPilot, 31 Panasonic, 54 Pandemic, 85, 91 Pando Daily (website), 112 Pandora, 20 Pane, Jess, 130 Panis, Jacques, 167 paper appeal of, 31, 35, 37–38, 105, 111, 114, 143, 188, 189, 222, 229, 238, 240 digital challenge to, unique, 30, 31 disadvantages of, 143 in education, 181, 188, 189, 192, 197, 198 making games out of, 95, 96 market for, 44–45 See also books; card games; cards/invitations; magazines; newspapers; notebooks/journals; stationery Paper FiftyThree, 47 paperless office, 30–31, 46 Paperless Post, 44–45 Paradox of Choice, The (Schwartz), 130 Park, Rosa, 103–104 Partners & Spade, 138 Patek Philippe, 168 PayPal, 211 Paz and Associates, 127 Pearson, 185, 186 Peebles, Benjamin, 187–188, 203–204 pencils, 44, 138, 208, 212 pens, xiv, xvii, 29, 35, 37, 41, 43, 44, 47, 126, 150–151, 192, 197, 208, 221, 222, 227, 228, 238 Percolate, 219–220 Perrot, Clèment, 70–71 Pescovitz, David, 213–214 Pew Research Center, 142 phones.

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
by Robert H. Frank
Published 31 Mar 2016

Another factor is that new technology has done little to relieve an important market constraint—the scarcity of people’s time and energy. No one could possibly examine each of the million-plus offerings in Apple’s app store. And as the Swarth-more psychologist Barry Schwartz argued in his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice, most people find it unpleasant to sift through a plethora of options.5 Many people sidestep that problem by focusing on only the most popular entries in each category. But the mere fact that top sellers are becoming even more popular doesn’t mean that the long tail’s promise of a golden age of small-scale creative energy has been empty.

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Sherwin Rosen, “The Economics of Superstars,” American Economic Review 71 (December 1981): 845–58; quote p. 845. 3. Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, New York: Hyperion, 2006. 4. Anita Elberse, Blockbusters: Hit-Making, Risk-Taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment, New York: Henry Holt, 2013. 5. Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, New York: Harper Perennial, 2004. 6. The technological changes described by long-tail proponents enable you to make an informed judgment about the extent of my bias. You can review some of The Nepotist’s music videos here: http://thenepotist.com/videos/. 7. Xavier Gabaix and Augustin Landier, “Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?”

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
by Mark Manson
Published 12 Sep 2016

When we’re overloaded with opportunities and options, we suffer from what psychologists refer to as the paradox of choice. Basically, the more options we’re given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we’re aware of all the other options we’re potentially forfeiting. So if you have a choice between two places to live and pick one, you’ll likely feel confident and comfortable that you made the right choice. You’ll be satisfied with your decision. But if you have a choice among twenty-eight places to live and pick one, the paradox of choice says that you’ll likely spend years agonizing, doubting, and second-guessing yourself, wondering if you really made the “right” choice, and if you’re truly maximizing your own happiness.

Team Geek
by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman
Published 6 Jul 2012

It’s to make life easier for users. It’s critical to pay attention to what they’re thinking and saying about your product and how they’re experiencing it over the long run. Your users are the lifeblood of your software’s success. You reap what you sow. * * * [58] Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (Ecco). [59] See Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law. [60] In case you’re concerned, the Mac has since been put out of its misery Appendix A. Epilogue We’ve covered an awful lot of topics in this book. After closing the cover it may be hard to figure out which parts to embrace in your daily life.

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Grant (Journal of Applied Psychology 93:1, pp. 108–124) Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews by Norman L. Kerth (Dorset House) The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman (Miramax) Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan (HarperOne) Being Geek (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596155414.do) by Michael Lopp (O’Reilly) The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz (Ecco) Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt (North River Press) Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh (Hachette Book Group) Index A note on the digital index A link in an index entry is displayed as the section title in which that entry appears.

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
by Natasha Dow Schüll
Published 15 Jan 2012

“They’ll come in and choose from a catalog of games and say I want this particular game in this particular denomination with a green background; it won’t be a problem.”75 But what should that catalog look like? Bruce Rowe at Bally was wary of presenting too massive a list of options. “How much choice can we give players, without decision-paralysis setting in?”76 He went on to cite a popular book by the psychologist Barry Schwartz titled The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Al Thomas of WMS made reference to the same book: “It’s an idea called the tyranny of choice—the more choices you give a person, the less likely they are to pick the one that satisfies them, so you have to really help them make those decisions.” The holy grail of consumer choice, he insisted, will not be a jukebox of infinite configuration options.

…

“The significance of these choices,” he elaborates, “is compounded by … mechanisms of responsibilization demanding that we … treat our lives as a project over which we should exercise a deliberate and long-term calculative effort.” 11. Rose 1999, 87. See also Giddens 1991, 3; 1994, 76 and Beck 1994, 14, 20, 25. Alberto Melucci (1996, 44) has similarly written that “choosing is the inescapable fate of our time.” 12. Schwartz 2005, 44. Schwartz argues in his best-selling book The Paradox of Choice (cited earlier in this book by representatives of the gambling industry) that despite strong positive cultural associations between choice and freedom among economists, policy makers, social scientists, and citizens, added options do not necessarily enhance societies. Elsewhere, Schwartz notes that upper-and middle-class citizens in America tend to associate choice with freedom, action, and control, while working-class citizens tend to associate choice with fear, doubt, and difficulty (Schwartz, Markus, and Snibbe 2006, 14–15).

…

“In Search of the Holy Grail (in Las Vegas): Love and Addiction from Both Sides of the Table.” Keynote speech delivered at the 11th International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking, Las Vegas. Schüll, Natasha. 2006. “Machines, Medication, Modulation: Circuits of Dependency and Self-Care in Las Vegas. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 30: 1–25. Schwartz, Barry. 2005. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: ECCO. Schwartz, Barry, H. R. Markus, and A. C. Snibbe. 2006. “Is Freedom Just Another Word for Many Things to Buy? That Depends on Your Class Status.” New York Times Magazine, February 26: 14–15. Schwartz, David G. 2003. Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond.

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
by Natasha Dow Schüll
Published 19 Aug 2012

“They’ll come in and choose from a catalog of games and say I want this particular game in this particular denomination with a green background; it won’t be a problem.”75 But what should that catalog look like? Bruce Rowe at Bally was wary of presenting too massive a list of options. “How much choice can we give players, without decision-paralysis setting in?”76 He went on to cite a popular book by the psychologist Barry Schwartz titled The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Al Thomas of WMS made reference to the same book: “It’s an idea called the tyranny of choice—the more choices you give a person, the less likely they are to pick the one that satisfies them, so you have to really help them make those decisions.” The holy grail of consumer choice, he insisted, will not be a jukebox of infinite configuration options.

…

“The significance of these choices,” he elaborates, “is compounded by … mechanisms of responsibilization demanding that we … treat our lives as a project over which we should exercise a deliberate and long-term calculative effort.” 11. Rose 1999, 87. See also Giddens 1991, 3; 1994, 76 and Beck 1994, 14, 20, 25. Alberto Melucci (1996, 44) has similarly written that “choosing is the inescapable fate of our time.” 12. Schwartz 2005, 44. Schwartz argues in his best-selling book The Paradox of Choice (cited earlier in this book by representatives of the gambling industry) that despite strong positive cultural associations between choice and freedom among economists, policy makers, social scientists, and citizens, added options do not necessarily enhance societies. Elsewhere, Schwartz notes that upper-and middle-class citizens in America tend to associate choice with freedom, action, and control, while working-class citizens tend to associate choice with fear, doubt, and difficulty (Schwartz, Markus, and Snibbe 2006, 14–15).

…

“In Search of the Holy Grail (in Las Vegas): Love and Addiction from Both Sides of the Table.” Keynote speech delivered at the 11th International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking, Las Vegas. Schüll, Natasha. 2006. “Machines, Medication, Modulation: Circuits of Dependency and Self-Care in Las Vegas. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 30: 1–25. Schwartz, Barry. 2005. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: ECCO. Schwartz, Barry, H. R. Markus, and A. C. Snibbe. 2006. “Is Freedom Just Another Word for Many Things to Buy? That Depends on Your Class Status.” New York Times Magazine, February 26: 14–15. Schwartz, David G. 2003. Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond.

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture
by Scott Belsky
Published 1 Oct 2018

Our natural drive to say yes to as much as possible, if only for optionality, may help us in the beginning of our careers but hurts us later on. THE ART OF CHOOSING So much of productivity and decision making comes down to how we manage options. One of the world’s greatest experts in decision making is American psychologist Barry Schwartz. In his revered 2004 book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Schwartz details how considering more options often makes us less satisfied with the eventual decision we make, not more certain in it. For example, throughout the book he uses the example of shopping for a new pair of jeans. Instead of simply walking into a store and picking up something with a 32-inch waistband, we are now given a multitude of options: dark or light denim, frayed or clean, high waisted or low slung, tight or loose, boot legged or skinny?

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PLANNING AND MAKING DECISIONS MAKE A PLAN BUT DON’T PLAN ON STICKING TO IT. “In preparing for battle”: Tom Kendrick, Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing (New York: AMACOM, 2015), 335. SUCCESS FAILS TO SCALE WHEN WE FAIL TO FOCUS. In his revered: Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: Ecco, 2004). “Maximizers need to be”: Ibid. “For decades, books”: Gerd Gigerenzer, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (New York: Viking, 2007), 5. IN ALMOST ALL CASES, BEST TO IGNORE SUNK COSTS. “If I didn’t have this”: Tom Stafford, “Why We Love to Hoard . . . and How You Can Overcome It,” BBC, July 17, 2012, www.bbc.com/future/story/20120717-why-we-love-to-hoard.

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(Hogan-Brun), 107 LinkedIn, 181, 258 listening, 321 lists, 374 living and dying, 26, 368–69, 373–75 Livingston, Jessica, 101–2 local maxima, 242, 243–44, 289 Loewenstein, George, 272 long-term goals, 26–27, 66, 299, 304, 350 Loup Ventures, 35 Louvre Pyramid, 200–202 Lyft, 191 Macdonald, Hugo, 37–38 Macworld, 295 Maeda, John, 107, 186, 308, 354 magic of engagement, 273 Making Ideas Happen (Belsky), 159, 190, 222 Managed by Q, 221 Marcus Aurelius, 39 market-product fit, 256 Marquet, David, 167 Mastercard, 275, 303–4 Match.com, 259 Maupassant, Guy de, 201 maximizers, 229, 284–85 McKenna, Luke, 217 McKinsey & Company, 72 Meerkat, 265 meetings, 44, 78, 176 Meetup, 168, 243–44 Mehta, Monica, 26 merchandising, internal, 158–60 metrics and measures, 28, 29, 297–99 microwave ovens, 325 middle, 1, 3–4, 7–8, 14–15, 20, 40, 209, 211, 375 volatility of, 1, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14–16, 21, 209 milestones, 25, 27, 31, 40 minimum viable product (MVP), 86, 186, 195, 252 Minshew, Kathryn, 72–73 misalignment, 153–55 mistakes, 324–25, 336 Mitterand, François, 201 Mix, 256 Mizrahi, Isaac, 324 mock-ups, 161–63 momentum, 29 money, raising, 30–31, 102 Monocle, 37 Morin, Dave, 273 motivation, 24 multilingualism, 107–9 Murphy, James, 92 Muse, The, 72, 73 Musk, Elon, 168, 273 Muslims, 302–3 Myspace, 89, 187–88, 349 mystery, 271–73 naivety, 308–9 Narayan, Shantanu, 289 narrative and storytelling, 40–42, 75, 87, 271 building, before product, 255–57 culture and, 134–36 National Day of Unplugging, 328 naysayers, 295 negotiation, 286–87 Negroponte, Nicholas, 107 Nest, 63 Netflix, 83–84, 126 networking, 138–39 networks, 258–61, 283, 284, 320–21 Newsweek, 38 New York Times, 63, 122, 275 Next, 141 99U Conference, 9–10, 26, 138, 167, 181, 197, 220, 221, 360 no, saying, 282–84, 285, 319, 371, 372 Noguchi, Isamu, 141 noise and signal, 320–21 Northwestern Mutual, 66 novelty, and utility, 240–41 NPR, 196 “NYC Deli Problem,” 174 Oates, Joyce Carol, 192 OBECALP, 59–61 obsession, 104–5, 229, 313, 326 Oculus, 350 Odeo, 36 office space, 140–41 openness, 308–9, 350 OpenTable, 79 opinions, 64, 305–7, 317 opportunities, 282–85, 319, 324, 325, 371 optimization, 8, 14–15, 16, 93–338 see also product, optimizing; self, optimizing; team, optimizing Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Sandberg and Grant), 39 options, managing, 284–85 organizational debt, 178–79 outlasting, 90 outsiders, 88, 105 Page, Larry, 60 Pain, 59 Paperless Post, 239 Paradox of Choice, The: Why More Is Less (Schwartz), 284 parallel processing, 33 parenting, 371, 372 Partpic, 120 passion, empathy and humility before, 248–50 path of least resistance, 85 patience, 78, 80–85, 196 cultural systems for, 81–82, 85 personal pursuit of, 84–85 structural systems for, 83–84, 85 “pebbles” and “boulders,” 182, 268 Pei, I.

The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology (Voices That Matter)
by Golden Krishna
Published 10 Feb 2015

Like the study in which people were offered 30 randomly selected chocolates and ended up being less satisfied and more regretful than when they were offered only six randomly selected chocolates.20 Or the discovery that the more retirement mutual funds employers offered to their employees through the investment firm Vanguard, the less and less those employees participated. This has been explained by Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, in his 2006 TED talk: Why? Because with 50 funds to choose from, it’s so damn hard to decide which fund to choose that you’ll just put it off until tomorrow. And then tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and of course tomorrow never comes. Understand that not only does this mean that people are going to have to eat dog food when they retire because they don’t have enough money put away, it also means that making the decision is so hard that they pass up significant matching money from the employer.21 For appliances, is there anything simpler than buttons?

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Deni Kirkova, “Half of Men Can’t Use a Washing Machine Properly and a Quarter Can’t Even Figure Out How to Switch It On,” Daily Mail Online, June 12, 2013. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2340216/Half-men-use-washing-machine-properly-quarter-figure-switch-on.html#ixzz2eyGy9Kr 20 Frederick Muench, PhD, “The Burden of Choice,” Psychology Today, November 1, 2010. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/more-tech-support/201011/the-burden-choice 21 TED, “Barry Schwartz: The Paradox of Choice,” YouTube, January 16, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM#t=552 22 “Adaptive Wash technology automatically senses the size of each load and uses the right amount of water to keep colors vibrant wash after wash.” “Whirlpool Washer,” RCWilley, Last accessed September 2014 http://www.rcwilley.com/Appliances/Laundry/Washers/Top-Load/WTW8500BW/3809722/Whirlpool-Washer-View.jsp 23 “Whirlpool’s Advanced Moisture Sensing System has three built-in sensors to read incoming and outgoing air temperatures while monitoring moisture levels inside the dryer so that the drying cycle ends when everything is perfectly dry.

Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead Us Into Temptation
by Chris Nodder
Published 4 Jun 2013

Companies want people to make decisions while they are in the store or on the site rather than postponing them, or worse still, choosing to make the decision elsewhere. So what do they do? Provide fewer options The more items, the more likelihood of procrastination. Barry Schwartz suggests in his book The Paradox of Choice that choice paralyzes us and makes us dissatisfied. The more choices we have available for us, the higher our expectations become. The higher our expectations, the more likely we are to be disappointed when the outcome isn’t exactly what we want. In contrast, if the only choice is “take it or leave it,” we’ll be happy that we even had that option.

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“Whitens, Brightens and Confuses.” (wsj.com). February 23, 2011. Retrieved December 2012. Confuse number of options with importance: Aner Sela and Jonah Berger. “Decision Quicksand: When Trivial Choices Suck Us In.”Journal of Consumer Research 39 (August 2012). Fewer options Choice paralyzes us: Barry Schwartz. The Paradox of Choice—Why More Is Less. Harper Perennial, 2004. Choice can be demotivating: Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper. “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (2000): 995–1006. Present compatible choices: Jonah Berger, Michaela Draganska, and Itamar Simonson.

The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less
by Emrys Westacott
Published 14 Apr 2016

There are, though, some well-known pitfalls and illusions here that few us avoid completely. For instance, while it is clearly true that having more money gives us more choices, it is not necessarily true that having more choices will make us happier. On the contrary, as Barry Schwartz persuasively argues in The Paradox of Choice, being confronted by too many options often makes us miserable: the decision-making process becomes more complex and draining; our awareness of what we are forgoing becomes more painful.20 This feeling of being oppressed by an expanded array of options is observable throughout our culture: in the quest by high school seniors for the perfect college; in the bewildering range of alternative settings and gratuitous enhancements with which software designers load up their programs; in the absurd number of hours many of us spend shopping online, comparing hundreds of essentially similar items.

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Martha Nussbaum, “How to Write about Poverty,” Times Literary Supplement, October 10, 2012. 19. Paul K. Piff et al., “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America 109, no. 11 (2012): 4086–91. 20. See Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). 21. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London: Bloomsbury, 2009); Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: Norton, 2013). It should be noted that Wilkinson and Pickett’s methodology, evidence, and conclusions have been challenged.

Vassal State
by Angus Hanton
Published 25 Mar 2024

And one sees this when facing options for buying extra storage space on Dropbox, Google or Apple: they give a very small number of choices and nudge people into signing up for the one that works best for them. Marketing departments have taken careful note of studies exploring how people make decisions. Monthly payments are easier to choose than bigger one-off purchases, and most buyers prefer having more granular control over services received. In his book The Paradox of Choice, American psychologist Barry Schwartz shows that people have different decision-making styles: some are ‘maximisers’ and want to consider all available options, while others are what he calls ‘satisficers’ and make ‘good enough’ decisions from limited information.18 US marketers are careful to cater for both groups.

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r=US&IR=T. 10 ‘The story of Zipcar’, Zipcar [website], https://www.zipcar.com/en-gb/about#:~:text=We’re%20on%20a%20mission,vehicles%20that%20support%20environmental%20sustainability. 11 Richard Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 12 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). 13 Quoted in Tim Bradshaw, ‘Apple aims to double service revenues by 2021’, Financial Times (31 January 2017), https://www.ft.com/content/a3e00a3a-4372-3f96-b8d6-d673ac4a5d57. 14 Quoted in ‘Apple paid subscriptions top 1 billion, doubling in three years’, Pymnts [website] (2 November 2023), https://www.pymnts.com/apple/2023/apple-paid-subscriptions-top-1-billion-doubling-in-three-years/. 15 ‘Media nations UK 2023’ [PDF], Ofcom [website] (3 August 2023), https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/265376/media-nations-report-2023.pdf. 16 Quoted in ‘Pain of paying – everything you need to know’, InsideBE [website], https://insidebe.com/articles/pain-of-paying/. 17 Florent Geerts, ‘The jam experiment – how choice overloads makes consumers buy less’, Medium [website] (17 August 2017), https://medium.com/@FlorentGeerts/the-jam-experiment-how-choice-overloads-makes-consumers-buy-less-d610f8c37b9b. 18 Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: Harper Perennial, 2004). See also Barry Schwartz, ‘The tyranny of choice’ [PDF], Scientific American (1 December 2004), https://bschwartz.domains.swarthmore.edu/Sci.Amer.pdf. 19 ‘Why do we value items purchased in a bundle less than those purchased individually?’

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
by Benjamin R. Barber
Published 1 Jan 2007

Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 6. 41. Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse (New York: Random House, 2003), cited by Robert J. Samuelson, “The Afflictions of Affluence,” Newsweek, March 22, 2004. Samuelson reports that Americans are consuming more food than ever, but still feeling more alone than before (in 1957, 3 percent of Americans reported feeling alone, while today the number is 14 percent). Meanwhile, 400,000 deaths a year are attributed to obesity. See also Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice. 42.

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See also Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice. 42. Quoted in Eduardo Porter, “Choice Is Good: Yes, No or Maybe?” New York Times, March 27, 2005. 43. Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice, p. 224. 44. Porter, “Choice Is Good: Yes, No or Maybe?” 45. Ibid. 46. “Under mandated choice, as much as 75% of the U.S. adult population would become committed potential organ donors” (Aron Spital, “Mandated Choice for Organ Donation: Time to Give It a Try,” Annals of Internal Medicine, vol. 125 [ July 1996], pp. 66–69). “We surveyed members of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) in conjunction with the Foundation for the Advancement of Cardiac Therapies FACT).

More Joel on Software
by Joel Spolsky
Published 25 Jun 2008

That brings us up to thirteen choices, and, oh, yeah, there’s an on/off button, fourteen, and you can close the lid, fifteen. A total of fifteen different ways to shut down a laptop that you’re expected to choose from. The more choices you give people, the harder it is for them to choose, and the unhappier they’ll feel. See, for example, Barry Schwartz’s book, 100 More from Joel on Software The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (Harper Perennial, 2005). Let me quote from the Publishers Weekly review: “Schwartz, drawing extensively on his own work in the social sciences, shows that a bewildering array of choices floods our exhausted brains, ultimately restricting instead of freeing us. We normally assume in America that more options (‘easy fit’ or ‘relaxed fit’?)

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See communities OOP (object-oriented programming), 57, 181 open source software, adopting features from, 227–230 options, problem of too many, 99–101 Oracle DBMS, 229 Osterman, Larry, 199 outages, 283–288 outsourcing, 80–81, 246 overconfidence, 93 Overjustification Effect, 42 P pair programming, 225 Paradox of Choice, The (book), 100 pay. See salaries, employee PEER 1 (Internet provider), 283–288 Penn State University, 56 Peopleware (book), 21 performance and memory/bandwidth limitations, 172–173 motivation for, 41–45 and systems, 44–45 Petzold, Charles, 196 Photoshop, 65 pointers, 54–57 Polese, Kim, 260 politics, dysfunctional, 28–29 polymorphism, 193 portable programming languages, 173–174 Postel, Jon, 136–137 Powazek, Derek, 17 power management software, 100–101 power wiring in offices, 225 powering off, 100–101 pricing demand curve, 266, 277–280 economic theory, 264–268 focus groups, 278 “get what you pay for” belief, 279–280 large gap in, 276–277 market segmentation, 270–275 net present value (NPV), 275 overview, 263 prioritizing features, 289–296 tasks, 292–293 private offices, 21–23 problems, offering solutions to, 151–154 procrastinating, 292–293 productivity effect of office space on, 21–23, 223 measuring, 213–216 “professional” versions of software, 272 Index 303 programmers, 211–220.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Published 10 Feb 2010

You can just imagine the mental conversation: “Property tax revenue is falling, but the teachers need a 3 percent cost-of-living raise, and we can’t forget about extracurriculars (cutting the marching band last year was a killer), but we must continue to invest in our new science magnet school—if it doesn’t work, there will be egg on our face—yet it’s ridiculous to consider any of this until we fix our crumbling infrastructure and address our overcrowded classrooms.” For the frazzled school board member, it suddenly looks a lot more attractive to roll over last year’s budget with a 1.5 percent increase on every line item. As Barry Schwartz puts it in his book The Paradox of Choice, as we face more and more options, “we become overloaded. Choice no longer liberates, it debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.” 2. The status quo feels comfortable and steady because much of the choice has been squeezed out. You have your routines, your ways of doing things.

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Kamenica, and Itamar Simonson (2006), “Gender Differences in Mate Selection: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(2), 673–697. Sheena S. Iyengar’s book How We Choose: The Subtext of Life (New York: Twelve Publishers) is coming out around May 2010, and you should look for it. Barry Schwartz. See Schwartz (2003), The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, New York: Ecco, p. 2. America Latina Logistica (ALL). The case of the Brazilian railroad is described in Donald N. Sull, Andre Delben Silva, and Fernando Martins (January 14, 2004), America Latina Logistica, Harvard Business School Case 9-804-139, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Your Money: The Missing Manual
by J.D. Roth
Published 18 Mar 2010

If you're willing to persevere, you'll have your debt paid off sooner than you think. Tip Conquering debt is like playing baseball: Go out there and do your best every single day. If you make an error, don't give up—make the play next time. If you strike out, shake it off and step up to the plate for your next at-bat. Your Money And Your Life: The Paradox of Choice In The Paradox of Choice (Harper, 2005), Barry Schwartz describes his research on two groups of people that he calls Maximizers and Satisficers: Maximizers only accept the best. Every time they make a purchase (or do anything else), they need to be sure they've made the best possible decision. Satisficers are willing to settle for "good enough."

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
by Nir Eyal
Published 26 Dec 2013

Somini Perlroth, Nicole Sengupta, and Jenna Wortham, “Instagram Founders Were Helped by Bay Area Connections,” New York Times (April 13, 2012), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/technology/instagram-founders-were-helped-by-bay-area-connections.html. 3. “Twitter ‘Tried to Buy Instagram before Facebook.’” Telegraph (April 16, 2012), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/9206312/Twitter-tried-to-buy-Instagram-before-Facebook.html. 4. Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice (New York: Ecco, 2004). 5. Blake Masters, “Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup—Class 2 Notes Essay,” Blake Masters (April 6, 2012), http://blakemasters.com/post/20582845717/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-2-notes-essay. 6. R. Kotikalapudi, S. Chellappan, F. Montgomery, D. Wunsch, and K. Lutzen, “Associating Internet Usage with Depressive Behavior Among College Students,” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 31, no. 4 (2012): 73–80, doi:10.1109/MTS.2012.2225462. 7.

Capital Allocators: How the World’s Elite Money Managers Lead and Invest
by Ted Seides
Published 23 Mar 2021

” – Scott Malpass “Everybody believes they’re in the above-average managers. It’s like Lake Wobegon children.” – Jon Hirtle “Very few of our best investments have had every single box checked absolutely perfectly. In fact, some of our more mediocre investments had been the things that initially checked every box.” – Adam Blitz “The Paradox of Choice profoundly states that humans are wired to want more choice and more opportunity, but the more choice they get, the more miserable they become.” – Brian Portnoy “Most institutions are prone to overdiversification or its cousin, diworsification.” – Andy Golden “An edge is something that can slip away very quickly

Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization
by Scott Barry Kaufman
Published 6 Apr 2020

As one team of researchers put it, “The cycle [of] . . . thrilling purchase, excitement fade, and subsequent desire for new material possessions . . . lends itself to materialism and decreased well-being.”61 More money also gives us more choices, and research shows that not only can more choices be overwhelming and stressful—“the paradox of choice”—but those who earn more than $100,000 a year spend more of their time engaging in unenjoyable activities (e.g., grocery shopping, commuting) and less time engaging in leisure than those earning less than $20,000 a year.62 More money also tends to make people less egalitarian and less empathetic toward strangers.63 Households that earn more than $100,000 a year donate a smaller percentage of their income to charity than those earning less than $25,000 a year.64 Even participating in an experience that makes you feel that you occupy a higher relative social class makes you less likely to give to charities than if you feel you are from a lower social class.

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See Being-Psychology Osborne, Arthur, 242 Otto, Max, 189–90 overarching purpose/possible self, 155, 159, 161, 162, 162, 163, 163, 164, 170, 172 overcompensation, 6, 57–58 overconfidence, 72, 74 overevaluation, parental, 63, 63n “Over-Soul, The” (Emerson), 189–91, 191n oxytocin, 44 painters and physical illnesses, 106 Pankhurst, Emmeline, 168, 169 “paradoxical self-esteem,” 62 “paradox of choice,” 49 parenting, xix, xxiii, xxxiv, 15, 16, 22–23, 24, 25, 63, 63n, 67–68, 92, 166 Park, Asaka, 50 passion, 117, 139, 141, 142–43, 145, 146–47, 171, 172–73, 175–76, 182 pathways (Hope Scale), 177, 178 Paulhus, Delroy, 122 Pauling, Linus, 115 Paulos, John Allen, 10 peak experiences, xxxiii, 89, 185, 193–216, 219, 221, 223, 225, 228, 228n, 230, 242, 243 “Peak Experiences as Acute Identity Experiences” (Maslow), 205 Pearl Harbor, World War II, 85 Pepper, Gillian, 28, 29 Perel, Esther, 141–42 perfectionism, 19, 55, 58, 69, 72, 75, 222, 240, 252 personality psychology, xx, xxxi, 107 Personal Mastery, 119 personal values research, 33 personology, 219 perspective-taking (quiet ego), 127, 134–35 Phillippe, Frederick, 145 Philosophy of Civilization course, 3 Physical Sensations (Awe Experience Scale), 208 physiological needs, xiv, 11–12, 14, 37, 78, 143n plateau experience (Theory Z), 221, 239–44 “pleasure system,” 43 Poe, Edgar Allan, 111 politics and Theory Z, 231–32 “pooling of needs,” 146 “positive disintegration,” 104 positive emotions, xxv, 93, 101, 146 “positive interpersonal processes,” 42 positive psychology, xx, xxiv, xxv, 103, 133, 151, 200, 238 positive relationships, xxv, 90, 174–75, 176 positivity resonance, 43, 120 Possibilities for Human Nature (Maslow), 251 possibility development, 32 “postambivalence,” 225 posttraumatic growth, 94, 102–6 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 19, 102, 211 poverty, 7, 24, 28, 29, 33 power, xviii, xix, xx, xxxviii, 35, 45–46, 55, 56, 58, 65, 73, 75–76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 115, 122, 127, 143, 156, 160, 169, 179, 221, 231, 232 Practice of Management, The (Drucker), 151 praise, 61, 63, 63n, 72, 165 prayer, 208, 213 predictive-adaptive-response theory (PAR), 25 prefrontal cortex, 25, 27, 28 preoccupied attachment (adult), 17, 18, 18n Price, Richard, 184 pride, xix, 57, 76, 78–80, 79n, 132, 151, 180, 246 primate psychology, 35 principled/virtuous (quality of moral exemplar), 167, 168 problem-focused coping strategy, 101–2 projection, 74–75, 130 proximity-seeking behaviors, 14–15, 15, 16 psilocybin, 202n, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213 psychedelics, 208–16 Psychiatry (scientific journal), 195 psychoanalysis, xxiv, 5–6, 54, 56, 65, 83, 84, 136, 234 psychological defensiveness, 107 psychological entropy, 9–12, 13 psychological flexibility, 105–6, 174 Psychological Review (scientific journal), 195 Psychology and the Human Dilemma (May), 117 “Psychology of Happiness, The” (Maslow), 155–56 Psychology Today, 85, 244 psychopathology, xx, 10, 26, 101, 101n, 102, 122 psychopharmacology, 209 “psychopolitics,” 231 psychosocial development, 226 psychotherapy, xxiv, xxviii, xxxvii, 50, 70, 117, 121, 141, 155, 156, 185, 205, 211, 237 public and historical figures, 88 pure Being.

Soulful Simplicity: How Living With Less Can Lead to So Much More
by Courtney Carver
Published 26 Dec 2017

It starts first thing in the morning. Should I get up or hit the snooze button? Coffee or shower first? What should I wear? Do those shoes go with these pants? Cereal or eggs for breakfast? Do I even want breakfast? We are fortunate to have the freedom to choose, but according to Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, we aren’t happier because of it. Schwartz says, “When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear.

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 1 Dec 2010

For that I would need two things: experts and lots of practice. First things first: experts. There is no shortage of how-to sexual information. From Chigong Penis (competes with the Iron Penis Kung-Fu school, not kidding) to orgasm training on elaborate vibrator-saddle machines like the Sybian, it’s a paradox-of-choice problem. Considering the options, I started to think that I might be reenacting The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. In 1973, Peter traveled with zoologist George Schaller 250 miles into Himalayan no-man’s-land in search of the near-mythical snow leopard. Not to be a spoiler, but he didn’t find the goddamn cat.

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International Medical Travel Journal Medical Tourism Guide (www.imtjonline.com/resources/patient-guide) The IMTJ’s 10-step guide to medical tourism is a useful starting framework for those considering a fun but productive trip abroad. The plethora of options can be daunting, and this checklist will minimize the paradox of choice. Bumrungrad Hospital (www.bumrungrad.com) This world-class hospital in Thailand has been featured in the “Top 10 World’s Medical Travel Destinations” (Newsweek) and is one of the “Top 4 Medical Tourism Pioneers” (Wall Street Journal). The pictures on their website will probably make your own US hospital look like a third-world hovel.

The Productive Programmer
by Neal Ford
Published 8 Dec 2008

It is very powerful in unobtrusive ways, supports most of the items on the list above, and plays very nicely with Mac OS X. While it initially failed the cross-platform requirement, it has become so popular on Mac OS X that another company is porting it to Windows (calling it eEditor). The Candidates 179 Choosing the Right Tool for the Job In his book The Paradox of Choice (Harper Perennial), Barry Schwartz cites a study showing that users are paralyzed by too many choices. Rather than being happy that they have lots of choices, too many choices make them uncomfortable. For example, there was a store that sold jam, and to allow customers to sample their wares, they put out a table with three jars of jam.

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
by Oliver Burkeman
Published 1 Jul 2012

And perhaps more to the point, it certainly seems to be the case that if you set out to achieve material goals, you’ll be less happy than those with other priorities: see Carol Nickerson et al., ‘Zeroing in on the Dark Side of the American Dream’, Psychological Science 14 (2003): 531-6. Nor does better education: See for example Robert Witter et al., ‘Education and Subjective Wellbeing: A Meta-analysis’, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 6 (1984): 165-73. Nor does an increased choice of consumer products: The canonical resource on this is Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice (New York: Ecco, 2003). Nor do bigger and fancier homes: Robert H. Frank, ‘How Not To Buy Happiness’, Daedalus 133 (2004): 69-79. research strongly suggests they aren’t usually much help: One example is Gerald Haeffel, ‘When Self-help is No Help: Traditional Cognitive Skills Training Does Not Prevent Depressive Symptoms in People Who Ruminate’, Behaviour Research and Therapy 48 (2010): 152-7.

Working Hard, Hardly Working
by Grace Beverley

As a generation, we’ve grown up without definitive borders between work and ‘not-work’. Technology allows us constant access to our working lives, which has slowly but surely developed into an anxiety that not working anywhere and everywhere is the equivalent of being in the office and having a nap. We have a sort of paradox of choice – the ability to monetise each and every hobby we might employ, and yet the insistence that if we aren’t earning stripes, we’re cutting corners. In his 2019 article,8 ‘The Toxic Fantasy of the Side Hustle’, Alex Collinson asks when we started saying ‘side-hustle’, rather than just ‘second job’.

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You
by Eli Pariser
Published 11 May 2011

Benkler argues that this is a real threat to the children’s freedom: Not knowing that it’s possible to be an astronaut is just as much a prohibition against becoming one as knowing and being barred from doing so. Of course, too many options are just as problematic as too few—you can find yourself overwhelmed by the number of options or paralyzed by the paradox of choice. But the basic point remains: The filter bubble doesn’t just reflect your identity. It also illustrates what choices you have. Students who go to Ivy League colleges see targeted advertisements for jobs that students at state schools are never even aware of. The personal feeds of professional scientists might feature articles about contests that amateurs never become aware of.

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems
by Lauren Turner Claire , Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier
Published 14 Oct 2017

Schmalensee, The Catalyst Code, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2007. 9 Even this may change as card companies develop new advertising capabilities allowing card users to be notified of merchant promotions of interest based on their previous purchases, physical location, etc. 10 There is emerging evidence that consumers can indeed be overwhelmed by choice. See B. Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, New York: Harper Perennial, 2004. 11 One side, the seller, knows everything about their products, while the buyer knows little. For the transaction to occur, the platform needs to facilitate this exchange of information by enabling both parties to communicate. Rating and reputation systems such as eBay’s star system have been designed to increase the trust of potential buyers by enhancing the information to the buyer (previous buyer reviews).

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
by Tyler Cowen
Published 27 Feb 2017

The prospect of the perfect match has become, for this person, the enemy of the good match.23 There is now an extensive literature in behavioral economics about how, under some circumstances, having more choice can make it harder for us to be content with our final selections. Maybe too many of us are always looking elsewhere, always wondering if we really ended up with what is best, and always noticing the other possibilities paraded before us all the time. All that choice can make us unsettled about what we have. There is even a phrase, Barry Schwartz’s “paradox of choice,” coined to cover this phenomenon. Nonetheless, we have to be very careful interpreting these claims. I know plenty of people familiar with these results—that choice can confuse people and lower their well-being—and yet, as far as I can tell, they still all want the extra choice. It’s not like smoking, where you tell people the truth and then many or most of them quit the habit, albeit with struggles.

We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production
by Charles Leadbeater
Published 9 Dec 2010

Journalists Is Over’, Pressthink, http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/ pressthink/2005/01/21/berk_essy.html (2005) Rosen, Jeffrey, The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (New York: Vintage Books, 2001) Rushe, Dominic, ‘Fantasy Game Turns Internet into Goldmine’, The Sunday Times, September 2006 Schienstock, Gerd, and Timo Hämäläinen, Transformation of the Finnish Innovation System: A Network Approach (Helsinki: Sitra Reports Series 7, 2001) Schwartz, Barry, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) Sen, Amartya, The Unwanted Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (Penguin, 2006) Sennett, Richard, The Culture of the New Capitalism (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2006) Shaw, Patricia, Changing Conversations in Organizations (Routledge, 2002) Spufford, Frances, Backroom Boys (Faber & Faber, 2003) Stacey, Ralph D., Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations (Routledge, 2001) Stacey, Ralph D., Douglas Griffin and Patricia Shaw, Complexity and Management (Routledge, 2002) Stebbins, Robert A., Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992) Steil, Ben, David G.

Technical Blogging: Turn Your Expertise Into a Remarkable Online Presence
by Antonio Cangiano
Published 15 Mar 2012

Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1 Counters If you read many blogs, you may have seen people showcasing more than a dozen social media icons at the bottom of their posts. Don’t bother doing this. In my experience, these icon buttons are a waste of time, as almost no one actually clicks them. It’s the paradox of choice at work. If you ask me to take one, two, or a maximum of three actions, I may do so. If you offer me fifteen options, I might not know which one to take and I’ll feel less obliged to do anything at all. Social Toolbars in Blogger By default, Blogger already provides you with a social toolbar that includes Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1 among others.

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published 20 Feb 2018

But of course the expression “less is more” is in an 1855 poem by Robert Browning. Overconfidence: “I lost money because of my excessive confidence,”fn11 Erasmus inspired by Theognis of Megara (Confident, I lost everything; defiant, I saved everything) and Epicharmus of Kos (Remain sober and remember to watch out). The Paradox of progress, and the paradox of choice: There is a familiar story of a New York banker vacationing in Greece, who, from talking to a fisherman and scrutinizing the fisherman’s business, comes up with a scheme to help the fisherman make it a big business. The fisherman asked him what the benefits were; the banker answered that he could make a pile of money in New York and come back to vacation in Greece; something that seemed ludicrous to the fisherman, who was already there doing the kind of things bankers do when they go on vacation in Greece.

The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work
by David Frayne
Published 15 Nov 2015

(Original work published 1930.) Ryle, M. and K. Soper (2002) To Relish the Sublime? Culture and Self- Realisation in Postmodern Times, London, New York: Verso. Salecl, R. (2011) The Tyranny of Choice, London: Profile Books. Schor, J. (1998) The Overspent American, New York: Harper Perennial. Schwartz, B. (2004) The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, New York: Harper Collins. Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Sennett, R. (1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York: Norton. Shipman, T. (2011) ‘State Workers Get Paid 7.5% More Than Private Sector Staff’, Daily Mail Online, 1 December (available at: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2068378/State-workers-paid-7-5-private-sector-staff.html).

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World
by Meredith Broussard
Published 19 Apr 2018

The algorithmic layer on top, which can be manipulated for profit, interferes with the average individual’s ability to do something simple like find a software developer. The same problem arose when I tried to find a handyman to fix something in my house. It reminded me why curation is so useful. In an online world in which everyone is supposed to find their own truth, it can sometimes take forever to do simple things. The paradox of choice can be a burden. Regrettably, I found myself in the same position as the nineteenth-century mathematicians who needed more human computers and couldn’t find them. I wanted to hire an entire team of women and people of color. I worked all my networks; it was far more difficult than I anticipated.

Busy
by Tony Crabbe
Published 7 Jul 2015

Great research and humor Author: Daniel Goleman Title: Focus Why you should read it: Describes the importance and mechanisms of focus Author: Jonathan Haidt Title: The Happiness Hypothesis Why you should read it: Accessible blend of modern and ancient wisdom Author: Edward Hallowell Title: CrazyBusy Why you should read it: Description of busy, likening it to ADHD Author: Tim Harford Title: Adapt Why you should read it: Why we have to fail to succeed—a great read Author: Chip and Dan Heath Title: Decisive Why you should read it: Great book on how we decide Author: Chip and Dan Heath Title: Switch Why you should read it: One of the best on how to make changes Author: Arianna Huffington Title: Thrive Why you should read it: Inspiring read on how to thrive today Author: Maggie Jackson Title: Distracted Why you should read it: This book really influenced my thinking Author: Daniel Kahneman Title: Thinking, Fast and Slow Why you should read it: A brilliant overview of System One and Two thinking Author: Tim Kasser Title: The High Price of Materialism Why you should read it: Explains the research behind Chapter 9 Author: Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey Title: Immunity to Change Why you should read it: A great book: make deep, adaptive change Author: George Leonard Title: Mastery Why you should read it: Describes the joy of practice Author: Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz Title: The Power of Full Engagement Why you should read it: Inspiring book on managing your energy Author: Steve Peters Title: The Chimp Paradox Why you should read it: A simple concept that helps manage emotions Author: David Rock Title: Your Brain at Work Why you should read it: Remarkably simple application of neuroscience Author: Brigid Schulte Title: Overwhelmed Why you should read it: Fantastic, and relevant book on the subject of busy Author: Barry Schwartz Title: The Paradox of Choice Why you should read it: The subtitle says it all: “Why more is less” Author: Martin Seligman Title: Flourish Why you should read it: The latest book by the founder of Positive Psychology Author: Sherry Turkle Title: Alone Together Why you should read it: Insightful: our response to technological immersion Author: Timothy D.

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life
by Gretchen Rubin
Published 3 Sep 2012

The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation. Translated by Mobi Ho. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987. Pink, Daniel. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead, 2009. ———. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2005. Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. New York: Harper Perennial, 2004. Seligman, Martin. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press, 2002. ———. Learned Optimism. New York: Knopf, 1991. ———. The Optimistic Child: How Learned Optimism Protects Children from Depression.

Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do About It
by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
Published 21 Aug 2023

Crossman, “ ‘I Can, Therefore I Must’: Fragility in the Upper-Middle Classes,” Developmental Psychopathology 25, no. 4, pt. 2 (Nov. 2013): 1529–49, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579413000758. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Having the privilege of choices: Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The growth-mindset ideology: Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine Books, 2006). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “backing off when they should”: Suniya S.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 6 Dec 2016

Jocko responded: “My mantra is a very simple one, and that’s ‘Discipline equals freedom.’” TF: I interpret this to mean, among other things, that you can use positive constraints to increase perceived free will and results. Freeform days might seem idyllic, but they are paralyzing due to continual paradox of choice (e.g., “What should I do now?”) and decision fatigue (e.g., “What should I have for breakfast?”). In contrast, something as simple as pre-scheduled workouts acts as scaffolding around which you can more effectively plan and execute your day. This gives you a greater sense of agency and feeling of freedom.

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: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (Randall Munroe), Ready Player One: A Novel (Ernest Cline), The Gormenghast Novels (Mervyn Peake) Teller, Danielle: Oscar and Lucinda (Peter Carey), The Hours (Michael Cunningham) Thiel, Peter: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (René Girard) Tsatsouline, Pavel: Psych (Judd Biasiotto), Paradox of Choice (Barry Schwartz) von Ahn, Luis: Zero to One (Peter Thiel), The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) Waitzkin, Josh: On the Road; The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac), Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig), Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts), For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old Man and the Sea; The Green Hills of Africa (Ernest Hemingway), Ernest Hemingway on Writing (Larry W.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Published 18 Dec 2006

But many strategies aren’t concrete enough to resolve a well-established psychological bias called decision paralysis. Psychologists have uncovered situations where the mere existence of choice, even choice among several good options, seems to paralyze us in making decisions. (We discuss one example in the “Simple” chapter). In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz discusses many other examples of decision paralysis. Imagine two tables in a grocery store where you can taste different kinds of jam. One table has twenty-four kinds of jam, and the other has six. Both tasting tables were popular with customers. But when the sales of jam were tallied, there was a shock: The table with only six jars generated ten times as many sales as the other table!

I Will Teach You To Be Rich
by Sethi, Ramit
Published 22 Mar 2009

We need more information so we can make better decisions! People on TV say this all the time, so it must be true! Huzzah!” Sorry, nope. Look at the actual data and you’ll see that an abundance of information can lead to decision paralysis, a fancy way of saying that with too much information, we do nothing. Barry Schwartz writes about this in The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less: . . . As the number of mutual funds in a 401(k) plan offered to employees goes up, the likelihood that they will choose a fund—any fund—goes down. For every 10 funds added to the array of options, the rate of participation drops 2 percent. And for those who do invest, added fund options increase the chances that employees will invest in ultraconservative money-market funds.

Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer
Published 14 Apr 2013

There were huge differences in the rates of depression across cohorts, suggesting a roughly 10-fold increase in the risk of depression across generations.” See Ed Diener and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5, no. 1 (2004): 16. 30. www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/ (accessed February 28, 2013). 31. Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 209. 32. www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/ (accessed February 28, 2013). 33. Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005). Chapter 2. Structure 1. Lau, “What the World Needs Is Financial Stability.” 2.

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Published 26 Mar 2013

The typical study in the literature has contrasted a small assortment of 4 to 6 items with a large assortment of 20 to 30 items and, like the jam study discussed here, the initial studies found that people were more likely to delay or resist choosing with the larger, 20- to 30-item assortment. The state of the literature as of the early 2000s was summarized by Barry Schwartz, who argued strongly for choice overload in his 2004 book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: HarperCollins). We wrote about the choice-overload research in our books Switch and Made to Stick, citing research by Eldar Shafir and others who have found evidence of decision paralysis with as few as two options. But the typical study has implicitly assumed that paralysis kicks in somewhere between 6 options and 20.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published 1 Jan 2001

(and Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine), 2003, “Glucocorticoids and Hippocampal Atrophy in Neuropsychiatric Disorders.” Stanford University. Savage, Leonard J., 1972, The Foundations of Statistics. New York: Dover. Schleifer, Andrei, 2000, Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schwartz, Barry, 2003, The Paradox Of Choice. New York: Ecco. Schwartz, B., A. Ward, J. Monterosso, S. Lyubomirsky, K. White, and D. R. Lehman, 2002, “Maximizing Versus Satisficing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice,” J Pers Soc Psychol. Nov., 83 (5):1178–1197. Searle, John, J., 2001, Rationality in Action. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years
by Richard Watson
Published 1 Jan 2008

It could be argued that the social aspects of meal preparation (women usually visit the stores in small groups) are compensation for increasing loneliness or that the hands-on, participatory nature of this type of cooking alleviates some of the problems of increasingly virtual and remote lives. A simple choice Strangely, something else we’ll see in the future is less choice. One problem with abundance is that there’s just too much of it, a point well made by Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice. He argues that having too many options is paralyzing our ability to make quick and meaningful decisions. One solution to this in a supermarket is simply to throw out any product that doesn’t offer a real point of difference or to replace the countless “me-too” brands with private-label alternatives.

The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy
by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz
Published 4 Nov 2016

Business of Fashion, September 3, 2015, http://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/mass-customisation-fashion-nike-converse-burberry, accessed November 29, 2015. 60. List of Crest Toothpaste Products, http://crest.com/en-us/products/toothpaste, accessed November 29, 2015. 61. See Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: HarperCollins, 2003); Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper, “When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (2000): 995–1006. 5 The “Buy Now” Lie If you’ve read this far, you understand the potential disparity between the legal rights of purchasers of analog and digital goods.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 1 Jan 2007

It was 9:47 P.M. at Barnes and Noble on a recent Saturday night, and I had 13 minutes to find a suitable exchange for The New Yorker Dog Cartoons, $22 of expensive paper. Bestsellers? Staff recommends? New arrivals or classics? I’d already been there 30 minutes. Beginning to feel overwhelmed with a ridiculous errand I’d expected to take five minutes, I stumbled across the psychology section. One tome jumped out at me as all too appropriate—The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen or read Barry Schwartz’s 2004 classic, but it seemed like a good time to revisit the principles, among them, that: The more options you consider, the more buyer’s regret you’ll have. The more options you encounter, the less fulfilling your ultimate outcome will be.

The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics
by Jonathan Aldred
Published 1 Jan 2009

Payne (1994) ‘How people respond to contingent valuation questions: A verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental good.’ Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 26: 88-109 Schmid, A. (2004) Conflict and Cooperation. Oxford, Blackwell Schwartz, B. (1990) ‘The creation and destruction of value.’ The American Psychologist 45: 7-15 Schwartz, B. (2004) The Paradox of Choice. New York, Harper Collins Schwartz, B., A. Ward, J. Monterosso, S. Lyubomirsky, K. White and D. R. Lehman (2002) ‘Maximising versus satisficing.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83: 1178-1197 Schwarz, N. and F. Strack (1999) ‘Reports of subjective well-being’ in Well-Being: The Foundations ofHedonic Psychology.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
by Sam Harris
Published 5 Oct 2010

Brain Res Brain Res Rev, 36 (2–3), 150–160. Schreiber, C. A., & Kahneman, D. (2000). Determinants of the remembered utility of aversive sounds. J Exp Psychol Gen, 129 (1), 27–42. Schrödinger, E. (1964). My view of the world (C. Hastings, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: Ecco. Seabrook, J. (2008, November 10). Suffering souls. New Yorker, 64–73. Searle, J. (1964). How to derive “ought” from “is”. Philosophical Review 73 (1), 43–58. Searle, J. (2001). Free will as a problem in neurobiology. Philosophy, 76, 491–514. Searle, J.

Geography of Bliss
by Eric Weiner
Published 1 Jan 2008

What is that in pounds, I wonder, as I get busy with the chocolate spread before me like a banquet. The relationship between choice and happiness is tricky, and nowhere more so than in Switzerland. We think of choice as desirable, something that makes us happy. That is usually true but not always. As Barry Schwartz has shown convincingly in his book The Paradox of Choice, there is such a thing as too much choice. Faced with a surplus of options (especially meaningless ones), we get confused, overwhelmed, less happy. On the one hand, the Swiss have more choices than any other people on the planet, and not just when it comes to chocolate. Their system of direct democracy means that the Swiss are constantly voting on issues large and small: whether to join the United Nations, whether to ban absinthe.

Lonely Planet Kauai
by Lonely Planet , Adam Karlin and Greg Benchwick
Published 18 Sep 2017

Hiking on the North Shore | Prisma By Dukas Presseagentur Gmbh/Alamy Stock Photo © Beaches When it comes to finding that ideal stretch of sand, Kauaʻi presents an embarrassment of riches. Whether you crave the all-natural and pristine or something more family friendly, if you need waves or value placid, sheltered coves, this island is a living example of the paradox of choice. Thankfully, with time, you can explore them all. Lumahaʻi Beach If you fancy a romantic stroll, or ideal beach-run terrain, this blonde beauty delivers. Haʻena Beach Park Reefs alive and teeming, ample sand space, on-duty lifeguards and bathrooms, too. Keʻe Beach The beach at the end of the road delivers the very best North Shore sunsets.

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
by Jonathan Haidt
Published 26 Dec 2005

Yet, when people are actually given a larger array of c h o i c e s — f o r example, an assortment of thirty (rather than six) gourmet chocolates from which to choose—they are less likely to m a k e a choice; and if they do, they are less satisfied with it.60 T h e more choices there are, the m o r e you expect to find a perfect fit; yet, at the same time, the larger the array, the less likely it becomes that you picked the best item. You leave the store less confident in your choice, more likely to feel regret, and more likely to think about the options you didn't choose. If you can avoid making a choice, you are more likely to do so. T h e psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this the "paradox of choice":61 We value choice and put ourselves in situations of choice, even though choice often undercuts our happiness. But Schwartz and his colleagues62 find that the paradox mostly applies to people they call "maximizers"—those who habitually try to evaluate all the options, seek out more information, and make the best choice (or "maximize their utility," as economists would say).

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play
by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant
Published 7 Nov 2019

Instead of picking a DVD to watch from a couple thousand at Blockbuster, you have tens of thousands of movies on demand through Netflix, and hundreds of thousands more through Apple and Amazon. Without a new interaction metaphor that can organize all those options with a new mental model, we’re left in a world defined by what the psychologist Barry Schwartz called the “paradox of choice.” Presented with too many options, it’s easy to choose nothing, or to be disappointed with what you choose. That’s the promise of personalization: to give us exactly what we want most while we spend as little energy as possible on making a decision. The stress of overwhelming choice is one that companies such as Amazon and Netflix are attempting to solve with algorithms, but it typically can’t be addressed in the physical world.

The Economics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Microeconomics
by Rod Hill and Anthony Myatt
Published 15 Mar 2010

Rothschild, K. (1971) ‘Introduction’, in 286 — (1998) The Overspent American: Upscaling, downshifting, and the new consumer, New York: Harper Perennial. — (2004) Born to Buy, New York: Scribner. Schumpeter, J. (1950) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Harper and Row. — (1954) History of Economic Analysis, New York: Oxford University Press. Schwartz, B. (2004) The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less, New York: HarperCollins. Sen, A. K. (1999) Development as Freedom, New York: Knopf. Sharpe, A. (2003) ‘Linkages between economic growth and inequality: introduction and overview’, Canadian Public Policy, 29, Supplement, pp. S1–S14. Shawn, W. (1991) The Fever, New York: Grove Press.

Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes
by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne
Published 5 Sep 2007

Whether it is through renewed economic or artistic expression, swirling microtrends in those countries have a profound impact on everyone in those societies, as more and more people seek greater expression either in those forms or in other innovative ways. Some have argued that the explosion of choice in both products and identities is confusing, paralyzing—even depressing. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in Blink and Barry Schwartz described in The Paradox of Choice, having twenty-four options of jam will draw shoppers in, but having six options of jam will actually trigger more sales. Having too many choices gives rise to feelings of pressure, overload, and regret. We’d rather not have any jam than look back and fear that we chose the wrong one. We’d rather not build ourselves into independent beings than experience the disappointment of being (inevitably) imperfect.

Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food
by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough
Published 17 Oct 2011

It’s often necessary to turn elsewhere for cooking oil, pasta, canned tuna, and other staples, and for most of us, that means going to the grocery store. It can be a daunting task. The average grocery store now boasts more than forty-five thousand SKUs (individual products), making it easy to fall victim to the paradox of choice. It’s hard to keep track of what’s out there, let alone home in on what’s good, especially with all the advertisements and promotions that savvy food marketers inundate us with. These distractions have conditioned us to prioritize price and brand over quality and good health. The proliferation of choices isn’t just junk food, either.

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants
by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi
Published 14 May 2020

Lepper, “When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, no. 6 (December 2000): 995–1006, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995. 13.Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 39–49; Peters et al., “More Is Not Always Better,” 117–18. 14.Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: Ecco, 2004), 128. 15.Roets et al., “The Tyranny of Choice,” 689; Iyengar and Lepper, “When Choice Is Demotivating”; Peters et al., “More Is Not Always Better”; Gerri Spassova and Alice M. Isen, “Positive Affect Moderates the Impact of Assortment Size on Choice Satisfaction,” Journal of Retailing 89, no. 4 (2013): 398, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2013.05.003; Marianne Bertrand et al., “What’s Advertising Content Worth?

Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance
by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm
Published 10 May 2010

Here’s why: when banks choose their own regulators—and gravitate toward those that promise the least oversight—more rigorous regulatory agencies may see their domain erode. And a regulator with no one to regulate has no reason to exist. So regulators have every incentive to be lenient in order to attract more financial institutions into their regulatory nets. Here too we have a race to the bottom. Such is the paradox of choice or “regulatory shopping.” In 2009 the Obama administration proposed a serious overhaul of financial regulation. It included creating three new federal regulatory agencies: the Financial Services Oversight Council, which would serve as a kind of über-regulator, coordinating regulation across agencies, eliminating gaps, and working to identify institutions that might pose a systemic risk to the financial system; a National Bank Supervisor, which would oversee all banks with a federal charter; and an Office of National Insurance, which would take on responsibility for regulating insurers.

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions
by Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher
Published 1 Jul 2009

Data Isn’t Free from the Eye of the Beholder Finally, even in realms where solid causal explanation is possible, when data is collected honestly and modeled carefully by a judicious student of Fisher and (if our pupil is so inclined) Bayes, who accounts for variation and validates his model (and still remains skeptical of its results), a couple of cognitive biases cloud our thinking. In the real world, we operate pseudoprobabilistically at best. Just as the statisticians tend to their tsk-tsk blogs, the behavioral economists have made a field from their own chronicles of infamy. The narrative fallacy, confirmation bias, paradox of choice, asymmetry of risk-taking, base rate fallacy, and hyperbolic discounting were mentioned earlier. Psychologists have indexed many others, ranging from anchoring (overreliance on a single recent data point in making a decision) to the Lake Wobegon effect (the phenomenon of more than half of individuals in a population believing they are above average).

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
by Frank Trentmann
Published 1 Dec 2015

See also: Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (New York, 1999); Oliver James, Affluenza (London, 2007); and Neal Lawson, All Consuming: How Shopping Got Us into This Mess and How We Can Find Our Way Out (London, 2009). In a more academic vein, see esp. Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (New York, 1999); Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (New York, 2005); Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: Self-control and Well-being in the United States and Britain since 1950 (Oxford, 2006); and Zygmunt Bauman, Consuming Life (Cambridge, 2007). 7. Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (New York, 1979), 3. See also the US Center for Consumer Freedom, https://www.consumerfreedom.com. 8.

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Kohli, ‘Private and Public Transfers between Generations: Linking the Family and the State’, in: European Societies 1, no. 1, 1999: 81–104. This paragraph further draws on Martin Kohli, ‘Ageing and Justice’, in: Binstock & George, eds., Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, 456–78; and Attias-Donfut, ed., Solidarités. CHAPTER 12 1. Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. 2. UK Audit Commission, ‘Acute Hospital Portfolio: Review of National Findings’ (2001): 220 million meals. McDonald’s sold around 700 million meals at the time in the whole of the United Kingdom. 3. Eugene C. McCreary, ‘Social Welfare and Business: The Krupp Welfare Program, 1860–1914’, in: Business History Review 42, no. 1, 1968: 24–49. 4.

Alone Together
by Sherry Turkle
Published 11 Jan 2011

Wired, May 1995, www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.04/turing_pr.html (accessed May 31, 2010). 9 Mihaly Csíkszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000 [1st ed. 1975]), and Natasha Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming). 10 Mihaly Csíkszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & and Row, 1990). 11 With too much volume, of course, e-mail becomes too stressful to be relaxing. But “doing e-mail,” no matter how onerous, can put one in the zone. 12 Natasha Schüll, Addiction by Design. On the issue of unreal choices, Schüll refers to the work of psychologist Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (New York: Harper Collins, 2003). 13 Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (1984; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), see, especially, “Video Games and Computer Holding Power,” 65-90. 14 Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp describes a compelled behavior he calls the “seeking drive.”

API Design Patterns
by Jj Geewax
Published 19 Jul 2021

While there is typically never a perfect choice on these topics, the least we can do is understand the trade-offs we’re making and ensure that these choices are made consciously and intentionally. Let’s take a moment to understand the various spectrums we should consider when deciding on the compatibility policy for each unique situation. 24.4.1 Granularity vs. simplicity The first, very broad, spectrum that many of our choices will lie on is one of choice. In the book The Paradox of Choice (Harper Perennial, 2004), Barry Schwartz discusses how more choice for consumer products doesn’t always lead to happier buyers. Instead, the overwhelming number of choices can actually cause increased levels of anxiety. When designing an API, we’re not really buying a product at a shopping mall; however, the argument may still carry some weight and is worth looking at.

Engineering Security
by Peter Gutmann

[122] “Subpoenas and Search Warrants as Security Threats”, Ed Felten, 25 August 2009, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/subpoenas-andsearch-warrants-security-threats. [123] “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing”, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.79, No.6 (December 2000), p.995. [124] “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less”, Barry Schwartz, Harper Collins, 2004. [125] “On the Rate of Gain of Information”, William Hick, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol.4, No.1 (1952), p.11. [126] “Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time”, Ray Hyman, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol.45, No.3 (March 1953), p.188. [127] “Status Quo Bias in Decision Making”, William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Vol.1, No.1 (March 1988), p.7. [128] “Do Defaults Save Lives?”