
Professor Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice: How More is Less, in a talk at Google, showed, surprisingly to many of us, that our sacred assumptions, assumptions used in the following syllogism, can be false. These assumptions and syllogism are the: more freedom = more welfaremore choice = more freedomHence more choice = more welfare This was discussed in more detail in his book. In essence, more choice can lead to worse decision making due to the increase complexity and resulting regret. In fact, people are often paralyzed and would not make any decision at all, if faced with too many choices. If they do make a decision in such situation, the decision is often made based on non-rational reasons and superstitions, and the result is far from optimal. Schwartz gave many examples of this situation. Examples from daily life are the explosion of choices in a supermarket: 175 salad dressings, 250 kinds of cereal, 360 types of shampoo, gel and mousse. Schwartz used studie...
No transcript available.