Barry Schwartz Quotes

“There is in American society, not only the the American society but more here than anywhere else, what I have come to call the official syllogism and this is a set of assumptions that we have about well-being and about how society should be organized that runs so deep that I think we don't realize we make them. And the only time you start to notice that you make them is when you can start to accumulate evidence that they are wrong. So what is this official syllogism?First, we all think that the more freedom people have, the more welfare they have. How could you think otherwise? This is [a] no-brainer. What argument could you make to suggest that there is anything wrong with this assumption?The second thing we think is that the more choice people have, the more freedom they have. What does freedom mean if not choice?”

“[W]hen face with overwhelming choice, we... become "pickers,"... we must be willing to rely on habits, customs, norms, and rules to make some decisions automatic.”

“We almost have an unlimited variety of phones, especially in the world of cell phones. ...It is not possible to buy a cell phone that doesn't do too much.”

“[W]e should make an effort to limit how much we think about the attractive features of options we reject.”

“[W]e must decide which choices in our lives really matter and focus our time and energy there, letting many other opportunities pass us by.”

“[C]osmetic surgery is slowly shifting from being a procedure that people gossip about to being a commonplace tool for self-improvement.”

“People are shopping more now but enjoying it less.”

“Having too many choices produces psychological distress, especially when combined with regret, concern about status, adaptation, social comparison, and perhaps most important, the desire to have the best of everything—to maximize.”

“[W]e now face a demand to make choices that is unparalleled in human history.”

“[C]hoice in many facets of our life has gone from implicit and often psychologically unreal to explicit and psychologically very real.”

“Ask yourself what is the point of advertising prescription drugs... Clearly they... expect we will... demand that our doctors write the prescriptions.”

“Filtering out extraneous information is one of the basic functions of our consciousness.”

“A large array of options may discourage customers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making the decision. ...[T]hinking about the attractions of some of the unchosen options detracts from the pleasure derived from the chosen one.”

“[I]ncreased choice among goods and services may contribute little or nothing to the kind of freedom that counts. ...[I]t may impair freedom by taking time and energy we'd be better off devoting to other matters.”