We all know people vary widely in their personalities, so it’s no surprise that they also take various approaches to making decisions. Therefore, in these cases, the reduction in the satisfaction levels could actually be traced back to choice deprivation as the chooser was not given enough choices that were perceived to be meaningfully different from each other. Finally, a third limitation of experimental approaches is that they don’t let us examine degrees of overload or deprivation—in everyday life, consumers encounter some assortments that are much different (smaller or larger) than they would want and others that are only slightly different than they would want. When we have so many options at our fingertips, we constantly have the impulse to pick something else to do, which saps our attention and sabotages our relationships.

When confronted with too many choices especially under a time constraint, many people prefer to make no choice at all, even if making a choice would lead to a better outcome. A number of Our Communities, Our Choices exercises will be undertaken throughout Moray, enabling local people to be more involved in decision-making. As expected, participants who received the larger catalog experienced more choice overload and were less satisfied with their choices. In a harsh and unforgiving environment, being picky about what kind of foods you would eat or how you dressed could result in you winding up dead. He found that instead of increasing decision satisfaction, having too many options made people less likely to be satisfied that they had made the best decision.After outlining the problems caused by having too many options, Sharma offers up some advice to both consumers and producers on how to limit the dissatisfaction that accompanies the paradox of choice.

It ran against cultural narratives—especially in the United States—and classic economic theory that assumed having more options was always better than having fewer. Schwartz finds that when people are faced with having to choose one option out of many desirable choices, they will begin to consider hypothetical trade-offs. Participatory Budgeting can be carried out in lots of different ways ranging from pop-ups and community events to digital experiences.Having too many approximately equally good options is mentally draining because each option must be weighed against alternatives to select the best one. By keeping options and choice limited, you are actually making it easier and more likely that the user will take action.