When faced with overwhelming choice, we are forced to become pickers, which is to say, relatively passive selectors from whatever is available. Being a chooser is better, but to have the time to choos...
Americans spent about $27 billion on nontraditional remedies, most of them unproven.
Apparently we always think we want choice, but when we actually get it, we may not like it. Meanwhile, the need to chose in ever more aspects of life causes us more distress than we realize.
Aversion to losses also leads people to be sensitive to what are called sunk costs. Imagine having a $50 ticket to a basketball game being played an hour’s drive away. Just before the game there’s a b...
Focus on what makes you happy, and do what gives meaning to your life
If people err systematically and substantially in making those predictions, it’s likely that they will make some bad decisions—decisions that produce regret, even when events turn out well.
Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.
NOVELIST AND EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHER ALBERT CAMUS POSED the question, Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? His point was that everything in life is choice.
On the other hand, the fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better.
On the other hand, the more we think about opportunity costs, the less satisfaction we’ll derive from whatever we choose. So we should make an effort to limit how much we think about the attractive fe...
Our heightened individualism means that, not only do we expect perfection in all things, but we expect to produce this perfection ourselves.
Students work to get good grades even when they have no interest in their studies.
Taking care of our own wants and focusing on what we want to do does not strike me as a solution to the problem of too much choice. It is precisely so that we can, each of us, focus on our own wants t...
The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better.
The existence of multiple alternatives makes it easy for us to imagine alternatives that don’t exist—alternatives that combine the attractive features of the ones that do exist. And to the extent that...
UNLIKE OTHER NEGATIVE EMOTIONS—ANGER, SADNESS, DISAPPOINTMENT, even grief—what is so difficult about regret is the feeling that the regrettable state of affairs could have been avoided and that it cou...
Unfortunately, the proliferation of choice in our lives robs us of the opportunity to decide for ourselves just how important any given decision is.
Whereas maximizers might do better objectively than satisficers, they tend to do worse subjectively.
Choices are based upon expected utility. And once you have had experience with particular restaurants, CDs, or movies, future choices will be based upon what you remember about these past experiences,...
If the manufacturer wanted to sell more of his particular brand, he was either going to have to make it distinctive or make consumers think it was distinctive, which was considerably easier.
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