Saturday, December 3, 2011

Too Many Choices

I really did enjoy the lecture about Economics and Motivation. We, as a nation are on choice overload. Choice overload is the demotivating effect of too many choices in the decision making process. A person has a difficult time making a decision because there are entirely too many choices available for us. I read an article in Psych Info that was called "Can There Ever Be Too Many Choices." The article was written by Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, and Todd.
The choice overload hypothesis states that an increase in the number of option to choose from may lead to adverse consequences such as a decrease in the motivation to choose or the satisfaction with the finally chosen option. (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, and Todd) There are so many choices everywhere. Too many classes to choose from, too many food products to choose, too many political people to choose and vote for, too many car options, and so on.
We also spoke about the demand law. The demand law refers to the quantity of goods a person is willing to purchase at various prices. When the price is raised, we buy less. When the price is lowered, we buy more. We spoke about the price of gas and how it is. Some people have no other choice to drive to their job and they need gas for their vehicle. As long as we are buying gas, the higher they can charge us and we will purchase the gas. If there is an item on sale at the grocery store than I don't normally buy because it is expensive such as chicken, I will buy more if it is on sale and stock up.


Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. (2010). Can there ever be too many options? A meta-analytic review of choice overload. Journal Of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409-425. doi:10.1086/651235

1 comment:

  1. I do believe that today we often face too many choices when making a decision. This can lead to choice overload, which in turn would put us in a position of not making any decision at all. Too many choices is very overwhelming for many, myself included. When having to decide between this or that, it is much easier to pick one over the other than if you have ten different options to chose from. Given so many choices, it increases the possibility of picking the wrong option. Instead of the right choice being 50/50, your odds decrease significantly and you may have only a 1/10 chance of picking the best choice.

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