A surfeit of choice?

It has often been taken for granted that if having some choice is good, then having more of it is better. After all, being able to choose between alternatives is an expression of our free will; indeed it is the very cornerstone of liberal democracy, as the Economist says. This concept is what lies behind the idea that the state ought to step back and merely have a role in enabling the citizen to act out his or her own life; all the state has to do is provide a wide array of choices, whether these be in healthcare, education or pensions. Anything more and the state is said to be suffocating our free will. 

Yet this logic may not be as infallible as it seems. As Barry Schwartz has argued on numerous occasions, "choice no longer liberates, but debilitates." Mr Schwartz postulates that an increase in choice is a positive thing up to a certain point, after which the benefits levels off. This may be because the effort required to distinguish between all the choices outweighs the benefit to the consumer of the extra choice. Being faced with an interminable array of deodorants which range from the "no white marks" to the "sensitive skin" to the "slows down hair growth" option without the adequate information to make a sensible choice can be a daunting experience; the opportunity costs rise and one is much more likely to regret the choice afterwards because expectations of the "perfect choice" have been excessively inflated. Paradoxically, many people would rather not choose at all or let someone else do it for them. 

Barry Schwartz argues that this social trend has been reflected in the explosion of university courses. The wide array of university courses then tentacles out into a sprawling web of modules that one can mix and match according to one's tastes. Should a student not be happy with a module, he or she can then switch to another one in the first week of term. Indeed, students can sample courses to find the perfect fit. Schwartz claims that today's young  have learnt to "pick" and not to "choose" as they take multitasking to a new level and grow up immersed in a world of choices. However, as the sampling process at the beginning of term exemplifies, they are incapable of making a decision and standing by it. 

An excess of choice can even work against the very principle it aims to uphold, namely free will. As we are submerged with options, the stress of information acquisition and eventually making a decision will lead us to simply fall back on a known or trusted brand, or to follow what others do. This leaves us prey to aggressive advertising and is an unintended abdication of our free will. As Italo Calvino writes in his novel "Mr Palomar", where the protagonist is faced with a plentiful variety of cheese at a Parisian fromagerie: "Mr Palomar’s spirit vacillates between contrasting urges: the one that aims at complete, exhaustive knowledge and could be satisfied only by tasting all the varieties; and the one that tends toward an absolute choice, the identification of the cheese that is his alone,he stammers; he falls back on the most obvious, the most banal, the most advertised, as if the automatons of mass civilisation were waiting only for this moment of uncertainty on his part in order to seize him again and have him at their mercy."

There is a point on which I disagree with Schwartz, however. He maintains that freedom within limits is preferable to unbridled choice. This is true in some respects as mentioned above. However, when it comes to education it may not always be preferable for an institution to provide a pre-defined structure for students. Why is it that one ought to lock oneself into a Literature degree, say, when one is also interested in Economics and Physics? Are these multidisciplinary interests to be frowned upon as indecision or cultivated? The paradox of the surfeit of choice is that we are exposed to such a wide variety of options yet we are expected to only choose one, Mr Palomar's absolute choice; it could almost be said that we are given the choice of our own prison.