![]() Adding options is what economists call a “Pareto improvement,” making some people better off while making nobody worse off.īecause of the “obvious” truth of the proposition that more choice makes us better off, it was big news when Sheena Iyengar published a series of studies more than a decade ago showing the opposite. People who don’t care about added options can ignore them, and people who do care may be able to find the perfect thing. We’re much obliged.īarry Schwartz: It seems a simple matter of logic that if people have more options in a choice domain (cereals in the grocery, shirts in the department store, mutual funds in the financial market, health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act), they’re better off. (The link is to a Financial Times article that sits behind a pay-to-read firewall.) But, when I asked him, Barry Schwartz was gracious enough to respond to the pro-choice literature that’s been coming out recently, and in the process, to summarize it. Is more choice a good thing? Apparently the famous jam experiment doesn't replicate: by Justin Wolfers January 23, 2014 Today, then, the news story would not be that the proliferation of consumer choice is paralyzing us, as Schwartz argued, but that he’s wrong.Īnd indeed, that’s been the counterattack lately, which came to my attention the other day when economist Justin Wolfers tweeted this: Norton & Company, 1983.Paul Solman: In 2003, our NewsHour economics crew traipsed to the western outskirts of Philadelphia to rendezvous with Swarthmore psychology professor Barry Schwartz and hear him make the case, at the something-for-everyone King of Prussia Mall, for the thesis around which he’d just written a book, “The Paradox of Choice.”Ī decade, a TED talk and a Freakonomics seal of approval later, the choice thesis has become something of a commonplace. Behaviorism, Science, and Human Nature, with Hugh Lacey, W.The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality and Modern Life.Learning and Memory, with Daniel Reisberg.The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life, Xlibris Corporation, 2001.Psychology of Learning and Behavior, with Edward Wasserman and Steven Robbins.The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Ecco, 2004.Why We Work, Simon & Schuster/TED, 2015.Education Ī select number of his works are available online. Schwartz studied under David Richmond Williams for his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania where he was a predoctoral fellow with National Science Foundation. In particular, he is a critic of the " rational economic man" model in both psychology and economics. His books criticize certain philosophical roots of Western societies and expose underlying myths common in both lay and academic psychological theories. Schwartz's research addresses morality, decision-making and the inter-relationships between behavioral science and society. He frequently publishes editorials in The New York Times, applying his research in psychology to current events. His work focuses on the intersection of psychology and economics. Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Emeritus Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College and since 2016 has been visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. ![]() ![]() Barry Schwartz (born August 15, 1946) is an American psychologist.
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