The Myth of Choice_ Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits - Kent Greenfield [12]
Choice might be meaningless. A recent Wendy’s commercial illustrates this. (Fast food companies are experts in choice.) The setting is an old west saloon, and bank robbers are getting away outside. When the sheriff runs out to give chase, the only horses tied outside are kids’ hobby horses. The point of the commercial is that a choice among bad options is meaningless. At the end of the ad, the barkeep opines: “Choices don’t mean a thing when there’s nothing good to choose.”4
Finally, choice is sometimes overwhelming, making it less likely that people will make decisions at all and increasing the risk of regret when they do. One notable experiment showed this effect by comparing two strategies for selling jam—by offering free sample tastes of a handful of choices or of many choices. When offered more choices, customers made fewer purchases, mostly because they had trouble deciding. Those who did buy from a bigger selection were less happy with their selection when asked about it later.5 They worried that perhaps they had not made the best possible choice.
My wife and I experienced a real-life example of overwhelming choice when we went to our local Best Buy to shop for a vacuum cleaner. Our dog Murphy is a beloved member of the family, but he sheds his blond hair constantly. We needed a vacuum to deal with the omnipresent yellow fur clogging our life. We were even willing to consider two vacuums, one handheld and one regular-sized. As for the latter, we had done enough research—we had asked a friend’s mother, who knows a surprising amount about vacuums—to have a vague preference for the type with the canister that rolls along behind you. As for the handheld, if we got one at all, we were totally at the mercy of whatever marketing pressure was brought to bear.
We were numbed by the choices. Vacuum cleaners lined both sides of one aisle and much of another. We tried to distinguish among brands, models, and capabilities, attempting to decipher the claims on the boxes and drawing on the “expertise” of the twentysomething clerk. We spent an hour trying to decide. Eventually my wife literally threw up her hands and declared that she was leaving. The choice was too hard.
I sprang into action, using my specialist-level knowledge of human choice. I am writing a book on the topic, I thought. I wasn’t going to allow us to be defeated by the plethora of vacuum choices. So I grabbed a small, expensive handheld model that resembled a futuristic ray-gun. I suppose you’re to imagine fighting dust to the death. It looked cool, and I knew the brand name because of television advertising. I also quickly decided on a canister-type vacuum that a previous purchaser had returned to the store. It seemed like a good deal.
Less than a week passed before we came to our senses and returned the ray-gun to the store. It was just too expensive. The following week I was back again, this time to complain about some accessories missing from the canister vacuum box. So much for my expertise.
The point is that however much we modern humans are in love with choice, it is hardly an unabashed good. Yet notwithstanding the problems, it remains one of the most popular concepts around.
2.
Choice is not only used to sell hamburgers and ways to watch television. It is also a powerful notion in politics and law. People use choice rhetoric to animate political movements and to justify legal doctrines.
In politics, the entire concept of democracy is based on some form of social contract or democratic consent—another name for choice. In fact, choice is so engrained in our national mindset that it made it into the third sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent”—the choice—“of the governed.” Without our consent, King George’s