The Paradox of Choice: An Ideology that was Drafted by Barry Schwartz

The Paradox of Choice
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The intellectual world has tried answering so many questions throughout history that would have otherwise posed a never-ending continuum of mystery. The weirdest part of it all is that the more these questions are answered, the more the confusion over them grows. The confusion gives birth to a dilemma, which in turn brings more questions. It can be taken as a back-and-forth cyclical movement of things and events.Among the fields most affected by such questions and dilemma, is psychology, itself responsible for helping out in matters concerning thoughts. Quite an irony. Psychology and psychologists have over time come up with theories to explain different psychological and behavioral aspects of human beings. It has enabled man to understand himself, or be understood, much better. However, more and more questions continue being raised in the field. Among them, is the paradox of choice.
The paradox of choice is an ideology that was drafted by Barry Schwartz. Schwartz, in this ideology, was critical of the impact of choices on an individual. In his interpretation, too many choices were not a recipe for better life and more fun, as widely thought to be. Instead, he believed that too many options were the prescription for more depression, confusion and general unhappiness for the people (Schwartz, 2006).Too many choices just brought about a waste of time for people instead of improving the general wellbeing. This perception holds water to some extent, but then also has got various points against its credibility.
Schwartz in his book, for example, looks at all the psychological elements that constitute stress or mental turmoil, which are associated with stress. When an individual is provided with an ideal chance, he or she will in some way, get stressed up. The stress is a culmination of thoughts and anxiety brought about by the inner struggle experienced in the mind, about the impact of choosing one thing over the other and of the resultant effect on an individual. The problem becomes even more vivid when the individual thinks of all the other bad previous choices made and how it impacts on his or her image and perception when comparing to partners or friends who made a different but better choice (Schwartz, 2006).The initially perceived freedom and happiness of the choices get quickly replaced by regret, apathy, and imminent disappointment.
The paradox of choice is best analyzed through the jam experiment that was conducted by Iyengar and Lepper. The experiment featured the selection of various jam brands, which were then categorized into two. The first one had six varieties of jam that were put on display for testing of customers. The other featured twenty-four varieties for the same purposes. The large variety provided by the twenty-four inevitably attracted more people to test (Iyengar & Mark, 2000).The most interesting thing, however, was that customers resorted to purchasing more jam from the six varieties than the twenty-four. Such an observation was enough for Schwartz to conclude that choice is bad. It has negative impacts on the consumer. The lesser the choices as can be seen from the findings, the more the sales. Quite a simple business strategy,...