Too Many Options

Too Many Options

The idea of there being just too much “stuff” out there in the world and the problem that creates when trying to make decisions is an idea that I have pondered over for some time. By “stuff” I’m not just referring to in the media (for example, the fact that I can immediately name several popular social media sites such as: Facebook, Tumbler, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, SnapChat, and Myspace- if you have and actually contribute to this many at a time I would imagine you have a lot of free time). 

I personally get major anxiety over choosing and making decisions, which is probably why I only have Facebook and rarely ever post or do any interacting other than looking at other people’s stuff. While this approach of keeping things simple avoids anxiety, it can also be limiting because I realize that there are many things I miss out on because of this. It’s interesting that we say we like options and we’re all about customization and yet studies find that too many options actually make people less likely to choose. I know I try to avoid shopping as much as possible for this very reason (It will take me hours usually because I am always so indecisive). Today in class something was brought up in one person’s final project that I found really interesting- the jam experiment.

http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/articles/Choice_is_Demotivating.pdf

I’ve never really thought about how many other people might experience this anxiety and how that could affect things such as marketing, so I found the research to be really interesting. This topic also makes me think about what it must have been like way back in the pioneer days when “stuff” was extremely minimal. I feel like if I were to take my boyfriends cellphone away, he wouldn’t know what to do. Whether or not the plethora of stuff has brought on more good or bad, I’m not sure, but I’m interested to see how things pan out in the future.