Is more choice always good?

[dell12]

We live in a world in which we're being given ever increasing choice. We can choose who our doctor is, which hospital to go to, where our kids go to school and to start a new one if we don't like the school we've chosen for them, and we have the ability to choose from an ever increasing array of products.

 

We've never had so much choice before in our history.

 

However a study in America found that in some cases having less choice, leads us to make better choices. For example when men and women were given a list of 5 potential dates and told to rank them in order of preference, they did so on personality, sense of humour etc. However when the same participants were given 20 potential dates, they ranked them on looks alone.

 

A similar(ish) experiment was carried out through the selling of jam. When consumers at a tasting session had to choose between 6 types of jam, 30% of them snapped up a jar. When asked to choose between 24 types of jam only 3% bought a jar.

 

Do you prefer to be able to choose between 50+ types of bread at a supermarket, than the 5 or 6 we might have got 50 years ago? Has greater choice given us expectations that are too high, that will invariably be dashed when the product or service fails to live up to expectation?

[taxman]

Too much choice can lead to prevarication and indecision. I nearly starved one night in Inverness because I couldn't decide where to eat.

 

Decisions, decisions, the agony of choice!

[Longcol]

I'd prefer to choose between a couple of quality products rather than dozens of indifferent ones.

[tonnywillgra]

it depends on what kind of things i got to choose from! i don't think more choice is always good. but whatever you pick, make sure its the best thing over the other. Choose wisely!