Comments on: The Paradox of Choice 2.0

By: John Benfield

John Benfield — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:44:52 +0000

I think that society as a whole is adapting to information, and subsequently choice, overload. While the conclusions of Iyengar and Lepper may have been valid 10 years ago, I think that the whole paradox of choice issue is going away. I beleive that we’re all adapting to the influx of options and information with more agile pattern matching and decision making. It’s most apparent if you watch teenagers reviewing google results, shopping online or evaluating products in a store. It resembles a form of ADD as they flit over irrelevant information, zero in on what’s important to them and make snap decisions while you’re still standing at the door wondering what you’re shopping for.

There is still an issue of “quality choices”. If someone is unable to easily find a suitable choice, quantity of choices will become irrelevant. But I think that we’re far more willing and able to sift through crap to find diamonds than we’ve ever been in the past.

I’m sure that if someone did a study segmented by generations and by internet/non-internet users, there would be a pretty distinct split. However, this is all my own opinion and just adds to the available choices of opinion that you can accept or refute

By: Gianluigi Cuccureddu

Gianluigi Cuccureddu — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:16:10 +0000

@ Bram

Interesting article indeed.
In many occassions, theories have ‘two sides’. It is certainly interesting stuff to keep an eye out in 2010, looking forward where it’s heading to, with the Internet and over-choice, clarity is more than welcome.

By: Bram Koster

Bram Koster — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:50:55 +0000

Hi Gianluigi, interesting topic. Have written about the paradox of choice myself earlier this year as well (http://bit.ly/Gmkmt; in Dutch).

However, since writing that post I ran into this article on the FT website: http://bit.ly/67Ezws. It states that “a more fundamental objection to the “choice is bad” thesis is that the psychological effect may not actually exist at all.” And it goes on to describe the efforts of some scientists to recreate research findings to support the paradox of choice and their failure to do so.

Interesting stuff to keep an eye out for in the next year!

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Twitted by glcuccureddu — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:33:39 +0000

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