When Choice is Demotivating: Can one Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?

1. When Choice is Demotivating: Can one Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation

2. When choice is Demotivating: Can one Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? Summary • Researchers study three cases in which they give participants either very little choices, huge variety of choices, or no choices at all. They want to find how rewards and the amount choice affect individual to make choices. • Case 1 • Researchers use two graduate school students in which they assign them to a grocer store. There they had to see how having very little options to a huge amount affect consumers ability to choose jam. • They concluded that having to many options affect they way individuals buy. Having very little option the consumer found that it might be something special about the product and they more then often went with that less choice option. • Case 2 • Researchers choose participants at Stanford college, Social psychology class to perform a task in which they wrote an essay and receive extra credit. But what the participant didn’t know was that some students would have more essay options to choose from then others. • They concluded that student with the extensive choice felt less opt to perform the assignment because the variety of choice. • Case 3 • This study was more lab base in which it was a very control setting. Participants had a choice of array of chocolates some individuals had a lot of option to choose from, some had very little and others had no control of what they could chose from. • They concluded their were no real significant differences between the size of choice and the set of participants. Overall Each case study wanted to prove the affect of choice whether having to many choices overwhelmed the participants and how the participant were motivated in their decision making process.