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Navigating the Paradox of Choice: Good or Bad?

Explore the benefits and drawbacks of choice, the impact of too much selection, and strategies for making decisions more effectively in everyday life. Discover how to balance between maximizing and satisficing, and minimize the potential for regret and disappointment.

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Navigating the Paradox of Choice: Good or Bad?

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  1. Paradox of Choice

  2. Paradox of choice - outline • Choice is a good thing • Choice is a bad thing • Identify a set of unexpected steps for living with the paradox • Explore some exercises for everyday life

  3. Choice as a good thing • Accounts for our individuality • we can have what we need or want • Gives a sense of control in a given situation • Equates with Freedom? • A critical instrument of the market • Hence, Choice => Happiness

  4. Can there be too much choice? • Supermarkets • TV channels • Electrical goods • Mattresses! • Jobs

  5. How do you assess the amount of time you spend on choosing between items in the supermarket/shopping? • Far too much • Too much • About right • Too little • Far too little • I don't use the supermarket

  6. Maximising vs. Satisficing • Rational Choice Theory (1944) • Later research (1955) suggests people satisfice when choosing • Most recently (2000) - we can be split into two groups • Satisficers • Maximisers • Maximisers • less satisfied with life • less happy • less optimistic • more depressed

  7. Potential for regret • We're not particularly good at choosing • Based on past experience? • peak-end rule • Poor self-knowledge • Bad at predicting what we'll want • Availability • We get misled by 'nearest' data • Counterfactual thinking • Increased choice, increased likelihood of choosing poorly

  8. Opportunity costs • "The cost of choosing one item is the cost of not having the benefit of the next best item" • We usually don't view it this way • we add up the benefits of all the choices we didn't take

  9. Increased Expectations • Known as adaptation • Hedonic treadmill • Comparisons • Harder and harder to make the 'best' choice

  10. Other issues • Self-blame • Time

  11. Paradoxical actions • Embrace voluntary constraints on freedom of choice • Seek for "good enough", not best • Lower expectations about the results of decisions • Make decisions non-reversible • Pay less attention to others around us

  12. Exercise: Satisfice more, exercise less • Think about occasions in life when you settle comfortably for "good enough" (2 mins) • Scrutinise how you choose in those areas (2 mins) • Now talk in groups of 4 about this (5 mins) • Plenary for 5 – bring out some of the ideas – let them be heard (5m) • Think about current areas in your life where you suspect you are maximising (3 mins) • Could you apply your satisficing strategy here? (3 mins) • Discuss plenary what folk are finding (5 mins) • And so an exercise for the week

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