Did you ever go to a restaurant and feel overwhelmed by the number of entrees? What about the vast variety of laundry detergents? Cars? Career choices? Potential spouses? Pizza toppings (any of you remember the days before pineapple was considered a legitimate pizza topping?)?

A new meta-analysis to be soon published in The Journal of Consumer Research, “Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload,” by Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder, and Peter M. Todd (specializing in cognitive choices, economic psychology and decision making) says that having more choices is a good thing. After analyzing 50 studies with 5,036 individual participants, they concluded that there is no basis for fears of the effects of “choice overload”.

The authors write:

“A number of studies in the past found strong instances of choice overload based on experiments in laboratories and in the field. While these results attracted a lot of attention in academia as well as in the media, a number of experiments found no empirical evidence for choice overload and sometimes even found that more choices instead facilitate choice and increase satisfaction.

“This suggests that adverse consequences do not necessarily follow from increases in the number of options. In fact, contrary to the notion of choice overload, these results suggest that having many options to choose from will, on average, not lead to a decrease in satisfaction or motivation to make a choice.”

Looking forward to reading the study and seeing if this applies simply to consumer products or to other areas of decision making.

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  Sonia at 5:59 am on April 20th, 2010

I don’t mind having a choice of two brands of baked beans, but in our supermarket we have a choice of 354 different brands. It’s ludicrous. It puts me off shopping.

  Jaclyn at 1:58 pm on April 30th, 2010

Sorry, but this is very misleading. You’re referring to a study that hasn’t even been published yet, and you quote a section that tells us absolutely nothing–no references, no sources to back up their theories, nothing.

And their statement that no empirical evidence has been found is FALSE. Research the studies conducted by Iyengar, Lepper, Botti, or Schwartz. These are all big names in the choice overload field.

It really annoys me that you quoted them making such sweeping generalizations and claims with no basis or evidence to back these theories up. It gives people an incorrect first impression.

  Richard Zwolinski, LMHC, CASAC at 5:47 pm on April 30th, 2010

Hi Jaclyn,
Thanks so much for your comments. From what we saw of the meta-analysis, it seemed pretty solid! (Just because it hasn’t been published doesn’t negate the legitimacy of it.) However, we weren’t really taking such a strong stance–we just found the topic and the subject fascinating and wanted to share. Wow! Who knew this was such a hot topic?
Thanks again for sharing your point of view–it is always welcome.
Best,
Richard

Links to This Article

Spoiled for Choice? | Therapy Soup Tools (April 19, 2010)

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“Spoiled for Choice? Why "Choice Overload" Is A Myth”

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    Last reviewed: 19 Apr 2010