Decoding Love - Andrew Trees [40]
BUYER’S REMORSE
It’s not just that having too many choices makes choosing more difficult. Having too many choices actually breeds both bad choices and dissatisfaction with the choices that you do make. Let’s look first at how difficult it is for most of us to make good choices. When presented with an array of possibilities, we do what any good consumer has been trained to do. We comparison shop (something that dating on the Internet has made almost compulsory), but it turns out that we are often misled by the comparisons. In one study, volunteers were asked how much they would enjoy eating potato chips. One group was asked this while sitting at a table with a bag of potato chips next to a chocolate bar, while another group was faced with a can of sardines next to the potato chips. As astute students of human nature, you can probably guess what happened next. Volunteers who were looking at the can of sardines predicted that they would enjoy eating the potato chips much more than those looking at the chocolate bar. Even though they weren’t choosing between two alternatives, they couldn’t stop themselves from comparing them. Of course, when the two groups ate the potato chips, the comparison became irrelevant, and both groups enjoyed the chips equally. But comparison had led them astray.
The problem is that in our need to distinguish between different things, we often seize upon some quality that may not have much to do with our ultimate satisfaction—or may not even exist. In another study, shoppers were presented with four pairs of identical panty hose and asked to choose the highest-quality pair. People had no difficulty choosing one identical pair over another (almost no one who participated noticed that they were identical). The biggest influence on their choice? Where the panty hose were placed—40 percent of people preferred the panty hose on the far right.
But the problems with too much choice don’t end once a decision has been made. Too much choice makes us more dissatisfied whatever we choose. That’s right. Even if it turns out later that we made the “best” choice, we still find ourselves more unhappy. Why? The problem is that comparing different things makes you aware of the trade-offs, how each choice involves giving up something you might very well like. And we hate the idea that we have to give things up. The irony is that those people who work the hardest to make the right decision—the truly indefatigable bargain hunters out there—end up the most dissatisfied of all, according to surveys, even if they have objectively made the correct decision.
Once you consider these problems, it can make you rethink your entire relationship history because our romantic choices are subject to the same confusions that we find in any instance when people face numerous choices. Who among us has not at one time or another experienced this romantic version of buyer’s remorse? No matter how excited we are, at some point in the future our feelings about the beloved will fade. The amazing part is not that this occurs time and time again, but that, according to studies ranging from consumer purchases to major life changes, we seem to be unable to remember that it occurs, so we experience the same cycle of excitement and disappointment each and every time. A little like Charlie Brown and the football.
CAN’T I JUST CHOOSE AGAIN?
Of course, our romantic mistakes can always be undone these days, which you would think is a good thing. But the very reversibility of our romantic commitments has only worsened our problem because that also undermines our satisfaction with our choices. To see this, you only need to look at a study of a group of college