The Paradox of Choice

I remember the first time I ordered a sandwich at an eatery in North America. I had walked on to the counter to ask for a grilled chicken sandwich, not expecting anything more to say and was subsequently stumped by an array of questions. I was asked to specify the type of bread, the type of cheese, whether toasted or not, and to choose the kind of toppings I would like.

Unprepared, and also only partially enlightened about the options before me (this applied especially for the types of bread and cheese), I took a significant amount of time to make a decision. Since then, of course, I have grown wiser and am much quicker in making such choices. Note, however, that my knowledge on the variety of bread and cheese remains sufficiently inadequate, only now I know that I don't really care if the latter is Mozzarella or Cheddar. I have realized that optimizing a sandwich can be rather taxing for one's brain when on an empty stomach, and therefore mostly make prompt random choices (barring a few exceptions).

There are many more examples where the availability of a myriad of options actually complicates the customer's decision making process and lengthens it. Imagine someone (perhaps a country bumpkin) going to an ice cream parlour with the simple objective of buying "an ice-cream", not familiar yet individually with the variety of desserts that are members of that vast family. At the shop he is bedazzled by the most gorgeous display of delicacies (each looking equally delicious and each well within his budget). When he entered the store he had in his mind this well-defined notion of an object called an ice-cream that he wanted. On entering, he finds out that the description of the object he had in his mind wasn't after all sufficiently specific; asking merely for an ice-cream is not informative enough, one has to say what flavour he wants, and there are several dozens of them. While earlier he wouldn't have cared about the flavour because of his ignorance, now the onus is on him to choose what is best for him. Even after making the choice he would be unsure about its aptness (and hence, not fully satisfied) because of his lack of knowledge on the many options he had to reject.

What does one do then? The more analytic among us actually go on to solve the optimization problem and come up with a definite answer. The rest, me included, would simply make an arbitrary or semi-arbitrary choice which would be very likely not optimal.

Funnily enough, in spite of the fact that the availability of a higher number of options complicates the whole process instead of simplifying it and most often does not guarantee a perfect match, we (including this blogger) tend to prefer places that offer more options. We would rather be baffled by a complex set of choices and end up making an unintelligent selection in the end, than to go somewhere that has fewer options and where the selection process would be easier, and perhaps more satisfying.

Is this another paradox of human nature?