Is having too many choices intrinsically good?

Andrew Tai Year 12, Churchill House

A few weeks ago, I was in a clothing store looking for a nice shirt with cool graphics, as my old clothes were getting worn out. I found a selection of shirts I liked and narrowed it down to two. One was in my favourite colour— orange, but the other one had a cooler print. I went home that day with only one shirt; if only in some alternate reality, there could have existed a shirt, one perfect for me, that fitted exactly how I wanted.

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When presented with a choice, one would instinctively weigh the pros and cons of each choice, and there is bound to be something missed out, something sacrificed, for the sake of making a choice. This is the economic concept of opportunity cost, the cost of forgoing the next best alternative. People will undeniably doubt whether they made Before you dismiss my problems as exclusively first-world ones, please hear me out. In sociology, one of the unspoken rules to increase morale is giving people the freedom of choice, freedom being something humans intrinsically crave. It doesn ’t matter if it’ s your meal of choice on a given day, the book you want to spend the weekend reading, or even where you want to be in five years: the more choices you have, the broader your horizons are. Surely that’ s a good thing, right?

As it turns out, having a choice doesn ’t always make you happy. Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore University, gave a famous TED talk and wrote a book on this very topic named “The Paradox of Choice ” . In it, he quotes a study made by David Myers from Hope U and Robert E Lee from Yale. They observed that although the GDP per capita of America had doubled over a 30 year period, the percentage of the population who described themselves as “ very happy ” had decreased by 5 percent. This fact may not seem significant, but this means that despite having more choices than ever before, 14 million Americans felt less happy than their peers from 30 years back.

the right decision, leading to uncertainty and anxiety. But when presented without a choice, people are oblivious to both pros and cons, for they simply wouldn ’t think to compare an object with a theoretical, non-existent one. In these scenarios, many would proclaim that “ignorance is bliss ” . Say, if on that day, I missed one of the shirts and only saw either the orange

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or the graphic shirt, I would’ ve picked the one I saw and been on my merry way, and my dilemma would have never taken place.

Therefore, the answer to the title question is, no. Having choices is not intrinsically good. At least not for our mental well-being. But knowing that you have no choice is also restricting and oftentimes suffocating. For example, only one brand in the country that the government allows to make jam. No matter what that company does to its jam, the citizens who want jam would have to eat it. The company wouldn ’t need to worry about complaints. After all, there ’ s no competition, no rivals stealing dissatisfied customers away. If both having choice and having no choice leads to discontent, then is there no way of achieving happiness, or finding a balance in life?

The answer to this is also no. Professor Schwartz believes that there is a silver lining in all this, and that lies within accepting your own limitations and the limitations of the world around you. This can be through resisting comparisons with those around you, lowering your expectations, or simply being grateful for what you already have. By doing this, it allows you to take a step back and let your life be just a bit more fulfilling.

In any case, that doesn ’t change that our world is one filled with choices, and I hope everyone reading this learns not to regret or dwell on the ones they make. Plus, if you were wondering, I got the shirt with the nice graphic; it was cheaper. It does mean I miss out on the orange shirt, though. Perhaps I should have waited for a discount? Guess I’ll never know.