What Makes You Guilty After A Purchase?

Source: http://fi.deluxe.com

Imagine yourself standing in a train field full of employees doing maintenance on the line. Now imagine you see a train coming rapidly at the tracks, now if you were to do nothing, it would end up killing 5 innocent workers. But, if you were to flip a nearby switch, it would change the track so that only 3 workers would be killed. Now the logical person would say you flip the switch and more lives would be safe. The problem with this no matter whether you pick to flip the switch or you stand idly by, you will always have this sense of regret with the choice you made, and whether it would have been better to choose the other option. This is the basic idea of the concept of “The Paradox of Choice”, a term coined by Barry Schwartz in his book of the same name.

The​ ​basics​ ​of​ ​this​ ​idea​ ​were​ ​talked​ ​about​ ​in​ ​the​ ​research​ ​journal​ ​named​ ​Judgement​ ​under Uncertainty:​ ​Heuristics​ ​and​ ​Bias,​ ​which​ ​gives​ ​an​ ​overview​ ​of​ ​this​ ​idea​ ​of​ ​not​ ​knowing​ ​whether​ ​the​ ​choice you​ ​made​ ​was​ ​correct.​ ​This​ ​idea​ ​connects​ ​to​ ​the​ ​idea​ ​of​ ​technology​ ​because​ ​of​ ​the​ ​recent​ ​problem​ ​of​ ​too many​ ​choices,​ ​which​ ​is​ ​also​ ​talked​ ​about​ ​in​ ​Barry​ ​Schwartz’s​ ​TED​ ​Talk​ ​on​ ​this​ ​topic.​ ​He​ ​states​ ​that​ ​the problem​ ​that​ ​this​ ​creates​ ​is​ ​that​ ​no​ ​one​ ​knows​ ​whether​ ​they​ ​picked​ ​the​ ​right​ ​option​ ​because​ ​we​ ​want whatever​ ​gives​ ​us​ ​the​ ​most​ ​utility,​ ​but​ ​because​ ​of​ ​how​ ​many​ ​choices​ ​we​ ​have,​ ​you​ ​never​ ​know​ ​if​ ​you picked​ ​the​ ​best option.

These​ ​two​ ​forms​ ​of​ ​documentation​ ​link​ ​back​ ​to​ ​this​ ​idea​ ​of​ ​uncertainty,​ ​that​ ​we​ ​never​ ​know​ ​which of​ ​our​ ​opportunity​ ​costs​ ​will​ ​lead​ ​to​ ​our​ ​best​ ​case​ ​scenario and give us the best life. A real life example of this could be seen in computers or more specifically, laptops. If you knew you wanted a computer that ran windows and was a laptop, on Amazon you get a list of nearly 14,000 different devices. This much choice is helpful because that means that there is some laptop that will be perfect for you, but it also means there is more anxiety to the choice because it would feel like finding a needle in a haystack.

All in all, the concept of the “Paradox of Choice” is something that exists out of the nature of what humans want, because we want to get that most utility out of our choices so that we feel better about it. But because of want to get the perfect thing, we have in turn given too many options to the people that makes it harder for someone to feel happy about their purchase.