Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. It's my great pleasure
Speaker 1: to have the great Barry Schwartz on the show today.
Speaker 1: Barry is the Doorwyn Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and
Speaker 1: Social Action at Swarthmore College. He studies the link between
Speaker 1: economics and psychology, offering startling insights into modern life. He's author,
Speaker 1: among many books, of the bestseller of the Paradox of Choice,
Speaker 1: Why More Is Less? Barry, thanks so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to talk to me today. My pleasure, Scott,
Speaker 1: so I. I've been a long admirer of your work,
Speaker 1: as has a lot of people, especially in the field
Speaker 1: of positive psychology. You know, one of these great myths
Speaker 1: is that the more we have choices, the more we
Speaker 1: will be happy, the more that will you know that
Speaker 1: abundance is good. You really busted this myth, I thought,
Speaker 1: in a really big way, suggesting that more twists actually
Speaker 1: make us miserable. I thought you could maybe talk about
Speaker 1: the initial theory a little bit for listeners who may
Speaker 1: not be as familiar with it as I am. Sure. Well, first,
Speaker 1: the little background the theory that the stuff I wrote
Speaker 1: about replaced or challenged is very intuitive, and it seems
Speaker 1: like it can't almost can't be false. You know, if
Speaker 1: there are five cereals in the supermarket and you're content,
Speaker 1: and I add three more, somebody will be happy about
Speaker 1: that and you'll be unaffected. So adding options is going
Speaker 1: to make somebody better off, and it's not going to
Speaker 1: make anybody worse off. So we should take every opportunity
Speaker 1: to add as many options as possible. That seems straightforward,
Speaker 1: It seems reasonable, it seems rational, seems true, and psychologist,
Speaker 1: there's in years studying the importance of control to well being,
Speaker 1: and of course control over your life means that you
Speaker 1: have choices. So choice is good because choice means you
Speaker 1: have control, and control is an essential ingredient in to
Speaker 1: well being. So all of that is background, All of
Speaker 1: that is reasonable, and there's a lot of empirical evidence
Speaker 1: on the importance of control. So the shock really was
Speaker 1: not results suggesting that choice is not good, but rather
Speaker 1: that it isn't only good, And a point can be
Speaker 1: reached where the benefits from choice basically have asimptote and
Speaker 1: have flattened out, and all the drawbacks of having too
Speaker 1: many choices start to kick in paralysis, the likelihood you'll
Speaker 1: make a bad decision because it's become so complicated, the
Speaker 1: likelihood even when you make a good decision that you'll
Speaker 1: feel dissatisfied because it's easy to imagine that some other
Speaker 1: decision would have been better. So choice is good, and
Speaker 1: what we assumed about that is true, but it isn't
Speaker 1: only good. And what my book focused on is the
Speaker 1: dark side of choice. Yeah, and also it really much
Speaker 1: is like, you know, like a kind of an an
Speaker 1: inverted u shiate curve of some sort or something where
Speaker 1: there is an optimal amount of choices upon which you
Speaker 1: get diminishing returns, even leading into negative you know, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right. And actually I wrote a paper with Adam Grant,
Speaker 1: who teaches at Wharton, in which we suggested that there
Speaker 1: may be many, many, many things in psychology where the
Speaker 1: curves and inverted you you know, arousal is good, too
Speaker 1: much arousal is bad. Some sharing and cooperation in the
Speaker 1: workplace is good. Too much sharing and cooperation in the
Speaker 1: workplace and it starts to become unproductive. Working together as
Speaker 1: a team is good. Too much working together as a
Speaker 1: team and everything gets routinized and you lose your spot
Speaker 1: eighty and it becomes bad. So we basically think that
Speaker 1: you inverted you as ubiquitous. And what prompted us to
Speaker 1: write this paper was that it's a way of understanding choice.
Speaker 1: Some choice is good. Too much choice, and it starts
Speaker 1: to produce the negative, start to outweigh the positives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really like that. I personally, I've been working with that,
Speaker 1: Susan Kane a bit. I'm trying to do some studies
Speaker 1: to see if there's too much extra version is bad.
Speaker 1: For instance, well, I think there's some reason to believe
Speaker 1: that they're that that's true published version span and too much,
Speaker 1: you know, such aversion is certainly bad, you know. Susan's
Speaker 1: point is that is that you know, maybe wat's too
Speaker 1: much or what's too little is less about an organization
Speaker 1: and more about an individual. So what you want to
Speaker 1: do is, if you have you know, talent and individuals
Speaker 1: who work best alone, let them you know, she's not
Speaker 1: suggesting that introverted organizations are better than extroverted ones or
Speaker 1: the reverse. She's suggesting that individuals thrive more in one
Speaker 1: or another environment, and the introverts have basically been locked
Speaker 1: out because of this ideology about sharing and open office
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. So yes, absolutely, yeah, I'm gathering
Speaker 1: some of Adam's best students from Orton to work on
Speaker 1: some research projects with me over the next year, with
Speaker 1: Susan and Adam on this personality by environment interaction, which
Speaker 1: is so so key. Is that interaction, not just getting
Speaker 1: other dispositions right. So you gave a TED talk in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, and I think that it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that is one of the first and last
Speaker 1: talks ever given at TED in shorts. Let me explain myself.
Speaker 1: It was the common diference was in Oxford, England, summertime.
Speaker 1: It was ninety degrees, very unusual in England. Nothing was
Speaker 1: air conditioned, people were sweating like pigs. Everybody was dressed
Speaker 1: the way I was dressed. And you know, all you
Speaker 1: were doing was talking to people in the theater. There
Speaker 1: was no online so I never gave it a thought.
Speaker 1: You know, here everybody is comfortable, trying to be comfortable
Speaker 1: because it's so hot, So why shouldn't I do that too?
Speaker 1: And I love. Three months later they asked me to
Speaker 1: sign a release. I did, and I figured, what difference
Speaker 1: does that make. It's not like anyone's ever going to
Speaker 1: watch this thing. Seven million views, I think more than
Speaker 1: seven or but but you know, there was no YouTube
Speaker 1: when this started, so watch videos online. Nobody did back then.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that the world has changed so much. Look,
Speaker 1: you were good in that video. I wouldn't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I was good. That was good. I embarrassed my wife
Speaker 1: by dressing that way, and the next time I gave
Speaker 1: it ted talk, she put her foot down and I
Speaker 1: actually dressed like a grown up long pants sport jacket,
Speaker 1: looked very respectable. You're repeatedly playing, you know, right outside
Speaker 1: my door, you know, the positive Psychologist, you know, every
Speaker 1: morning I come in, I'm like, there's Barry. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I would like to talk a little about how maybe
Speaker 1: some of your ideas have changed since you wrote your book,
Speaker 1: uh ten years ago, because I haven't following the the
Speaker 1: replication so one there was like a replication failure, but
Speaker 1: then you know or there was like a you know,
Speaker 1: a meta analysis like a zero and then but then
Speaker 1: I've also seen research showing that at least within the
Speaker 1: particular tomeans like with sales, it's still as robust. So
Speaker 1: I would just love, Yeah, I'm just gonna be quiet
Speaker 1: and listening to you. So the meta analysis, which got
Speaker 1: a lot of attention, showed that the average effect size
Speaker 1: is just slightly bigger than zero. But what that misrepresents
Speaker 1: what the findings are, which is that there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of studies that show more choice is good, and
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of studies that show more choices bad,
Speaker 1: and they average out to a mean effect of zero.
Speaker 1: So what we know is virtually every study that varies
Speaker 1: the number of choices gets an effect. It just isn't
Speaker 1: always negative. They and the people who did them analysis
Speaker 1: looked very hard to see if they could find what
Speaker 1: the mediators were determined, and they weren't unable to. But
Speaker 1: there's a more recent meta analysis that suggests that there
Speaker 1: are mediators and they can be identified and they account
Speaker 1: for much of the variation. So I think now what
Speaker 1: you'd want to say is that the too much choice
Speaker 1: effect is real. It happens under circumscribed conditions. Though circumscribed
Speaker 1: conditions are not narrow, they're fairly broad. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: happen to everybody in all situations. So I think that
Speaker 1: the people drew the wrong conclusion from the original meta analysis,
Speaker 1: and we're in a different place now, so my views
Speaker 1: about this have not really changed. I never thought that
Speaker 1: this was a universal finding. For example, you might love
Speaker 1: car buying, and if you do, there won't be too
Speaker 1: many options because you'll roll up your sleeves, you'll immerse
Speaker 1: yourself in all the details. You'll make yourself an expert
Speaker 1: on what the latest models have to offer, and it's
Speaker 1: for you. It's part of the pleasure of buying a car. Oh,
Speaker 1: but you don't feel that way about buying genes. I
Speaker 1: might feel that way about about choosing addition or restaurant,
Speaker 1: but not about buying a car. So there's bound to
Speaker 1: be different situational differences and individual differences in tolerance for
Speaker 1: this kind of information. Exactly, I really am mentioned So
Speaker 1: I'm in personally interest in the individual differences aspect very much.
Speaker 1: So do they find any personality traits were mediators? They
Speaker 1: did not. They did not. We you know, with my collaborators.
Speaker 1: I did some research which has also turned out to
Speaker 1: be somewhat controversial. We identified a personality trait that we
Speaker 1: call maximizing, which is trying to get the best, as
Speaker 1: opposed to satisfying, which is looking for good enough. And
Speaker 1: we found there are individual differences, and people who score
Speaker 1: as high maximizers are less happy, less optimistic, borderline clinically depressed.
Speaker 1: And the reason that this matters is that in a
Speaker 1: world with limited options, suppose you're a satisficer and there
Speaker 1: are two kinds of genes, what will you do? You'll
Speaker 1: try them both. I suppose you're a maximizer and there
Speaker 1: are two kinds of genes. What will you do? You'll
Speaker 1: try them both, So it doesn't really matter. But suppose
Speaker 1: there are two thousand kinds of genes. Now, a satisfieser
Speaker 1: who is looking for good enough will try on genes
Speaker 1: until he or she gets a pair that's good enough
Speaker 1: and then stop looking. The maximizer needs the best, so
Speaker 1: you have to look at all over, which is impossible,
Speaker 1: so you end up, you know, eventually, just picking something
Speaker 1: and convinced that if you'd look longer and had more patience,
Speaker 1: you'd have found something better. So in a world of
Speaker 1: exploding options, being a maximizer is really not good for
Speaker 1: one's mental health, not to mention that it takes an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of time and effort to try to achieve it.
Speaker 1: So that's what we found, and we created a scale,
Speaker 1: and there's been controversy about the scale. It is very
Speaker 1: much an imperfect scale. We ended up coming up with
Speaker 1: a modified version of it ourselves, which has better psychometric properties.
Speaker 1: Other people think that the scale should be different. So
Speaker 1: this is an ongoing debate that I must say I
Speaker 1: have much less interest in than maybe I should. I'm
Speaker 1: sure eventually well people will figure out what a good
Speaker 1: scale is for measuring the idea. Uh. And so that's
Speaker 1: a personality variable. And we found in the study that
Speaker 1: came out after my book was published that people who
Speaker 1: score high as maximizers who are looking for jobs college seniors,
Speaker 1: they get better jobs and they feel worse about the
Speaker 1: jobs they get. They do better and they feel worse.
Speaker 1: And this has kind of been my summary of the
Speaker 1: price of the benefits and the costs of being a maximizer.
Speaker 1: Maximizers will do better and they will feel worse about
Speaker 1: how they do. It's maximizing correlated with the need for ambition,
Speaker 1: high ambition. We didn't look at we looked at perfectionism,
Speaker 1: we looked at optimism, and we didn't look at ambition.
Speaker 1: We didn't need for achievement. He didn't look for We
Speaker 1: didn't look at that. You know these are right for
Speaker 1: right for investor, Maybe I will. And I'm curious also
Speaker 1: in how the dopamine system plays a role here with
Speaker 1: your theory, I think there's a there's a strong interaction here.
Speaker 1: We know that one of the key differences between extroverts
Speaker 1: and introverts actually is that extroverts tend to have a
Speaker 1: higher dopamine production or release at when it comes to
Speaker 1: competitive rewards. So I could imagine maximizers it being somewhat
Speaker 1: domain specific in the sense you're trying to maximize or
Speaker 1: you get very excited abouy by many options within particular domains,
Speaker 1: like competitive rewards like money, sex, social status, those kinds
Speaker 1: of things. So you may find that that there might
Speaker 1: be maximizers for petitive awards, or maybe maximizers for like
Speaker 1: career decisions, maximizers for I don't know if you looked
Speaker 1: at the domain specificity or or if we looked a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, we looked a little We certainly have
Speaker 1: never looked at the physiology. We looked a little bit
Speaker 1: for domain specificity and never found anything. I don't think
Speaker 1: we in the right way. I expected there'd be domain specificity.
Speaker 1: And one of my current pet concerns has to do
Speaker 1: with a particular domain of two domains, choosing a college
Speaker 1: and choosing a job, because I think the college choice
Speaker 1: problem is destroying our youth, and I think the job
Speaker 1: choice problem is destroying our young adults. And it's partly
Speaker 1: that you know, there is this notion there is the
Speaker 1: best college to go to, and damn it, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get in, and there is a best job to
Speaker 1: get and I'm going to get it. And pressure that
Speaker 1: kids put on themselves, or their parents put on them,
Speaker 1: or some or their peers put on them, or all
Speaker 1: of the above is really just wreaking havoc on the
Speaker 1: well being of the most privileged, affluent kids in the
Speaker 1: history of the world. There was a long article actually
Speaker 1: in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times
Speaker 1: this Sunday, triggered by this apparent suicide epidemic in Palo
Speaker 1: Alto in high school about why it's happening, when it
Speaker 1: why does it happen when it happens? And suicide epidemics
Speaker 1: are rare, so you know, that's the canary in the
Speaker 1: coal mine. But you know, substance use, anxiety disorder that
Speaker 1: those things are not rare. And I think it really
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes from this, this commitment to
Speaker 1: tow the idea that only the best will do. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many implications of your theory. You know. Obviously
Speaker 1: for a selection of meats, have they done a lot
Speaker 1: of research on the proliferation of like pornography, for instance,
Speaker 1: among among the this this generation. Have you confided I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean maybe maybe there is some research.
Speaker 1: I think a fair amount of research on these you know,
Speaker 1: dating sites too. Yeah, which got you know, which superseded
Speaker 1: what used to it was something that used to exist,
Speaker 1: speed dating, where you would actually go and spend an
Speaker 1: evening and meet six, eight, ten people for very short
Speaker 1: conversations and if you're interested then email addresses will get exchanged.
Speaker 1: Nowadays you can do all of this online, so the
Speaker 1: evenings together in a hotel ballroom are less common. But
Speaker 1: I think it is a real issue. You know, there
Speaker 1: is a sense now that, because of the availability of
Speaker 1: at least profiles online, that you're choosing a mate from
Speaker 1: a set that's essentially infinitely large, right, And I think
Speaker 1: that if that's what you think you're doing, you'll live
Speaker 1: your life alone. Yeah, And I wonder how many of
Speaker 1: these options really in reality would be like possible. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, we do have this tendency when we're with
Speaker 1: one option to think about all the other available options.
Speaker 1: But how many of those other available options really, in
Speaker 1: reality are are good? I bet we our brain like
Speaker 1: automatically thinks that there's a lot more better option. The
Speaker 1: grass is greener, much more so than it actually is greener. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that's true. And you know, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a writer named Laurie Gottlieb who's become some sort
Speaker 1: of a psychotherapist, and she wrote a book called Marry
Speaker 1: Him about her efforts to find a partner with her
Speaker 1: biological clock ticking. So it's high pressure. And she goes
Speaker 1: to see this matchmaker guy and comes in with a
Speaker 1: list of attributes that her mate needs to have, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's like five thousand items long. He looks
Speaker 1: at it, he laughs, and she says, what's so funny?
Speaker 1: He says, well, I think there are probably maybe five
Speaker 1: to ten people in the world who meet criteria. And
Speaker 1: then he just pauses a beat and he says, and
Speaker 1: what makes you think that any of them would be
Speaker 1: interested in you? Right? We assume, like you know, in
Speaker 1: our imagination, that it's all anything goes. So, so she this,
Speaker 1: actually this and my work or so, she says, actually
Speaker 1: got her to change her thinking and start looking from
Speaker 1: good enough instead of the perfect partner. But you know,
Speaker 1: you can't say to people all you need is a
Speaker 1: good enough life partner. No, I can't say, first of all,
Speaker 1: when people here good enough, what they hear as you're settling,
Speaker 1: you have no standards. And that's not what good enough means.
Speaker 1: Good enough. You know, if you want to go to
Speaker 1: one of the twenty five best liberal arts colleges in
Speaker 1: the country that reflects pretty high standards, you know, that's
Speaker 1: twenty five out of how many thousand schools. It just
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be Swarthmore. It could be something. It
Speaker 1: could be Oberlin, could be Franklin and Marshall. Right, that's so.
Speaker 1: And so there are people with high standards, reasonably high standards,
Speaker 1: and they're very different from people who think they need
Speaker 1: to get the best. Yeah, you're very quotable. I think
Speaker 1: at one point you said something like I'm going to
Speaker 1: call you a couple of times in this interview, but
Speaker 1: I think once I heard you see something like good
Speaker 1: enough really is almost always good enough? Or something. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think if there's a single sentence from my work
Speaker 1: that people should memorize, that's yeah. So a little background
Speaker 1: on me. I did my undergrad at Carnegie Mellon and
Speaker 1: I studied with HERB Simon right up to when he
Speaker 1: passed away in two thousand. Studied with Herbs. I was
Speaker 1: his last research assistant. That's quite something. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it was such an honor, such an honor. So I
Speaker 1: would first hand, you know, saw the satisficing theory and
Speaker 1: that he wont to know what prize for, you know,
Speaker 1: and heard about it. I took his class, his graduate
Speaker 1: level class, and he talked a lot about it. So
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with the idea of satisficing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I see so many similarities in your own work to
Speaker 1: that idea. Was it like it was so it seemed
Speaker 1: like a very natural extension. Were you when you were
Speaker 1: coming up with this research program everything. How much were
Speaker 1: you influenced by HERB Simon? That's one question, but there's
Speaker 1: a fundamental difference. Simon's focus was on hottentitive limitations, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't saying don't maximize. He was saying, we can't maximize.
Speaker 1: We don't have the resources to that. Right. So, if
Speaker 1: you're only interested in describing how decisions get made, he said,
Speaker 1: a more realistic model is a satisficing model. You choose
Speaker 1: what's good enough, but you're alert to what's better, so
Speaker 1: that over time, the standard of good enough keeps going
Speaker 1: up and up and up and up and up. So
Speaker 1: for him, he was not offering people advice about what
Speaker 1: to do. He was offering a description about what we
Speaker 1: do do in contrast to what the rational choice theorists say,
Speaker 1: which is that we maximize. He said, that's just based
Speaker 1: on a completely unrealistic psychological theory. Yeah, no, he does that.
Speaker 1: And he was so grounded in the decision and problem
Speaker 1: solving literature and heuristics, the heuristics literature, so you know,
Speaker 1: he he was not interested individual differences. He was very
Speaker 1: interested in like general problem solving strategies that people use.
Speaker 1: And then you know, obviously applying that to these things.
Speaker 1: So you do show that, and so that is definitely
Speaker 1: one major major extension is showing that no, we can,
Speaker 1: it's just not conducive to happiness. The second thing is
Speaker 1: is really, you know, having your foot firmly planted in
Speaker 1: the field of positive psychology and being able to contribute
Speaker 1: to the debate or discussion surrounding what is the best
Speaker 1: contributor to a life well lived or well being or
Speaker 1: a deeper sense of well being. And the idea that
Speaker 1: satisficing is is more wink tightly linked to well being
Speaker 1: than maximizing. I think is actually a really important not
Speaker 1: no actually about it, but it is a really important
Speaker 1: insight and and you know, for people trying to live
Speaker 1: their own life life lives, it can be very I
Speaker 1: think it'd be very difficult for all of us to
Speaker 1: to not think, well, we've just settled by satisficing the
Speaker 1: people that you've encountered who are just really really happy
Speaker 1: in life, who are good with choosing the good enough option.
Speaker 1: What are these people like? How are they able to
Speaker 1: overcome that sort of thing nagging in the back of
Speaker 1: their head saying, well, how do I know if I've
Speaker 1: just settled. I don't know the answer to that. You
Speaker 1: know there are, I mean, I'm one such person. I
Speaker 1: never ever, I don't think I've ever made a decision
Speaker 1: where the aspiration was to get the best. Why that is,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. You know, it wasn't certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: delivered on my part. It just seems to be the
Speaker 1: way I'm built. I have two kids, one of whom
Speaker 1: is very much like me. The other one is really
Speaker 1: has a hard time making decisions because she can't turn
Speaker 1: off the only the best we'll do engine. She knows
Speaker 1: it about herself. Some of these decisions she enjoys, so
Speaker 1: you know, she's not tortured by him. But it's not
Speaker 1: like if she were tortured by it, she'd shut it down.
Speaker 1: This is the way she goes through life. I have
Speaker 1: no idea what makes for this difference. I think it
Speaker 1: would be terrifically interesting to study how children learn how
Speaker 1: to make choices. And this astonishing thing to me is
Speaker 1: that there's no literature on this. There was no literature
Speaker 1: on this when I wrote my book, and there's no
Speaker 1: literature on this yet, and there really should be, since
Speaker 1: in the modern world, choice making is a major problem,
Speaker 1: and we don't have a clue about how kids develop
Speaker 1: a sense of and so to me, the question about
Speaker 1: how do you become a maximizer or satisfies or begs
Speaker 1: for you some sort of a developmental study interventions. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: before you do the intervening, let's see what are the
Speaker 1: key influences that determine what pattern of decisions you know.
Speaker 1: I have speculated that parents inadvertently turn their kids in
Speaker 1: to maximizers by being maximizers on their kid's behalf. So
Speaker 1: before kids are making real decisions, parents make decisions for them.
Speaker 1: And I've never heard of parents say I only want
Speaker 1: once good enough for my children. Parents don't say that
Speaker 1: the best that's right. So you watch your parents making decisions,
Speaker 1: and their parents don't think you're watching, but of course
Speaker 1: you are, and you learn more from that than you
Speaker 1: do from anything they tell you. And the model that
Speaker 1: you end up with is when it comes to making decisions,
Speaker 1: only the best will do. That's the way mom and
Speaker 1: dad do it for me. Now, I don't think parents
Speaker 1: mean to teach that to their kids. I don't even
Speaker 1: know that they mean to act that way themselves. But
Speaker 1: so that's a speculation. There's no evidence one way or another.
Speaker 1: You know, we have all these assumptions. We assume that,
Speaker 1: like you're aware of the model of DC and Ryan,
Speaker 1: you know the fundamental humans, and autotomy is one of them. Yes,
Speaker 1: so how have you made contact with that literature? Well,
Speaker 1: so the mistake, I'm respectful of that, and I think
Speaker 1: they're right about the importance of autonomy. The mistake is
Speaker 1: to equate autonomy with choice. Okay, you know, when there's
Speaker 1: too much choice, it actually takes autonomy away. I just
Speaker 1: heard it talk today given by guy a doctor who
Speaker 1: also is a first break researcher and decision making named
Speaker 1: Peter Euble, gave a talk at Penn and he's sort
Speaker 1: of interested in how patients make decisions. You know, you
Speaker 1: get a prostate cancer diagnosis, what do you do. What's
Speaker 1: the role of the doctor, what's the role of the patient.
Speaker 1: What kind of information should the patient get? Who decides?
Speaker 1: And one of his points is that the way the
Speaker 1: medical community has responded to the criticism that it's too
Speaker 1: paternalistic is it puts the decision in the hands of
Speaker 1: the patient and then showers the patient with so much
Speaker 1: information that the patient is totally bewildered, so that in effect,
Speaker 1: what ends up happening is the patient chooses whatever the
Speaker 1: doctor prefers. So it looks like you're you're putting the
Speaker 1: patient in charge, But what you're doing is you're blitzing
Speaker 1: the patient with information so that the patient has no
Speaker 1: recourse but to say, what do you recommend? Doc? And
Speaker 1: then now you feel licensed to make a recommendation because
Speaker 1: you've been asked for one. So so I think you
Speaker 1: are not producing autonomy when you give people a blizzard
Speaker 1: of information. You are disempowering people. That's not the intent often,
Speaker 1: but that's the result. So I think it's the failure
Speaker 1: to appreciate the inverted you that leads people to e
Speaker 1: quate choice with autonomy. Choice and autonomy go together until
Speaker 1: they stop going together. Choice goes up, autonomy goes down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's we keep coming back to the inverted use shape
Speaker 1: currently keep coming. I think that really is the way
Speaker 1: to understand this. So I really like your fish bowl analogy.
Speaker 1: I really like it a lot. You don't have freedom,
Speaker 1: you have paralysis, right, A fish is out of the
Speaker 1: are you of paralysis? I'm trying to think in terms
Speaker 1: of like an educate educational implications for this. We want
Speaker 1: to give students the autonomy to figure out who their
Speaker 1: self is or you know, like try different identities on
Speaker 1: to see what really interests them, what their passions are.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you thought about in the sense in
Speaker 1: the sense of which you can have too much? Not again,
Speaker 1: because your point is very well taken. Autonomy is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as choice, Like in a school environment,
Speaker 1: how we can maybe give too many choices of courses
Speaker 1: a take or things to discover? Oh? Absolutely, absolutely, And
Speaker 1: you know it's funny. There's a there's an organization that
Speaker 1: I have a great deal of admiration for called Complete
Speaker 1: College America, Okay, and its focus is on the other
Speaker 1: end of the distribution. The kids would go to junior
Speaker 1: college and community college and are you know, working full
Speaker 1: time and trying to get at least an associate's degree.
Speaker 1: The graduation or kids in these sort of will take
Speaker 1: anyone institutions is something on the order of twenty percent.
Speaker 1: Not only does nobody graduate, but kids take tons and
Speaker 1: tons of credits for which they are paying money that
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of that don't even move
Speaker 1: closer to degrees. And the reason is wether a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons. One is that they're inadequately advised, which is
Speaker 1: partly that these schools don't have any money to have
Speaker 1: an adequate advising system. But the rest of it is
Speaker 1: that these schools copy the elite universities and what they
Speaker 1: see at Harvard and Stanford and forthmore is give kids
Speaker 1: lots of choice. So they give their kids, students lots
Speaker 1: of choice, and the result is that they simply get lost.
Speaker 1: They get it's all bewildering to them. And if you
Speaker 1: start structuring the programs and taking choice away, you dramatically
Speaker 1: increase the successful completion and you dramatically increase wasted credits.
Speaker 1: So I think there is a right amount of choice
Speaker 1: to give students, to let them, as you put it,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of figure out who they are, cultivate self,
Speaker 1: and pursue their own unique interests in talents. We have
Speaker 1: no idea what that optimal amount is, but I can
Speaker 1: tell you with some confidence that more is not better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I am struck by a documentary I once
Speaker 1: watched on North Korea, and you find that some people
Speaker 1: who spent most of their or all of their childhood
Speaker 1: in North Korea who then end up in South Korea
Speaker 1: or even America, and they're interviewed about, Oh, it must
Speaker 1: have been terrible, it must have been horrible having no
Speaker 1: you know, freedom, et cetera, et cetera. I was really
Speaker 1: struck by how some of them were, like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I was much happier in North Korea than I am
Speaker 1: in America. I just think of your theory when I
Speaker 1: when I see things like that, you know, I think
Speaker 1: we maybe. Of course, I'm not saying that, like it's
Speaker 1: all wonderful North Korea. That's you know, That's not what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. But I'm saying that. I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: how the extent to which you know, sometimes the most
Speaker 1: simple things in life or being kind of are some
Speaker 1: of the most simple decisions of life, being outsourced to
Speaker 1: someone else can really be lead to high well being.
Speaker 1: I think that's right, you know. And you know, advice
Speaker 1: I give people when they insist on asking me advice.
Speaker 1: One of the best advice I give, aside from good
Speaker 1: enough is almost always good enough, is choose when to choose.
Speaker 1: And what I mean when I say that is, you know,
Speaker 1: delegate some decisions. You need a new cell phone, don't
Speaker 1: research it, talk to your friend who just got a
Speaker 1: new cell phone? What'd you get? I got an iPhone?
Speaker 1: What do you think of it? It's pretty good get
Speaker 1: an iPhone? Is it the right phone for you? Maybe not?
Speaker 1: Is it going to be perfect for you? Probably not.
Speaker 1: But you've taken a torture is process and turned it
Speaker 1: into a five minute process. And is it going to
Speaker 1: be a good Of course it is going to be
Speaker 1: a good enough phone. So so this really is in
Speaker 1: aspect the strategy of taking advantage of the kind of
Speaker 1: collective wisdom of people and restricting your agonizing and handwringing
Speaker 1: to decisions where you think you don't know who to
Speaker 1: get advice from, and there aren't many decisions like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm now thinking about since we activated the schema of
Speaker 1: her Simon. At his funeral, I remember friends and family
Speaker 1: mentioning how he used to eat the same sandwich every day,
Speaker 1: and he used to walk the same path, you know,
Speaker 1: to work every day at the same time that he
Speaker 1: he just found it, you know, just take up too
Speaker 1: much cognitive resources. To the journalist Michael Lewis, who's written
Speaker 1: you know, like a million best sellers, interviewed Obama and
Speaker 1: in the course of the interview, the question of Obama's
Speaker 1: wardrobe came up, and he has I don't know if
Speaker 1: half a dozen suits and he always wears a white shirt,
Speaker 1: and Michael Lewis asked him about it. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: he said, I make a lot of decisions every day.
Speaker 1: The last thing I want to do is have to
Speaker 1: decide what I'm going to wear. Yeah, so he's basically
Speaker 1: engineered his environment so that that decision is off the table.
Speaker 1: Walt taste thing very personal. I you know, I've decided
Speaker 1: I just can't decide every morning what I'm going to wear.
Speaker 1: I just can't deal with it anymore. I have a
Speaker 1: rotation now of like maybe seven things, and I've just decided,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just going to rotate it around. No
Speaker 1: one's going to figure out the pattern, like even if
Speaker 1: they who cares? Yeah, who cares? I'm with you. I
Speaker 1: made a slim I made a slightly different but a
Speaker 1: decision about that with which I had the same effect,
Speaker 1: and that is I wear jeans every day. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the only thing I have to think about is what
Speaker 1: shirt to wear. And for years I basically had seven
Speaker 1: or eight identical shirts. So what that meant is that
Speaker 1: I look the same every day. I had a uniform.
Speaker 1: It was the Schwartz uniform, and I was happy as
Speaker 1: a clam. Is it the same pair of genes that
Speaker 1: you wear? I have a couple of pairs of genes.
Speaker 1: You know, eventually they start to get sort of smelly
Speaker 1: and you gotta watch them. Okay, so I wrote it,
Speaker 1: But they're all they all look the same, they look
Speaker 1: the same. Not selecting the right genes for this Wednesday,
Speaker 1: I'm just selecting what your ever pair of genes is
Speaker 1: next in line. Absolutely, the idea is really to look
Speaker 1: the same and not have to think about what I wear. Ever,
Speaker 1: just transition for a second. There's some interesting research in
Speaker 1: the creativity literature, which is what my area of main
Speaker 1: ex area of expertise is, showing that constraints is very
Speaker 1: conducive to creativity. Sure, so I wonder if you made
Speaker 1: any linkages to that literature. There is some interesting research
Speaker 1: suggesting that, like you have like science fiction and writers,
Speaker 1: and you ask them, you know, think of a whole
Speaker 1: new planet something that you know, like just like you
Speaker 1: give no constraints whatsoever, you say, think of what a
Speaker 1: whole new species and a whole other planet would be
Speaker 1: and you find that what they come up with is
Speaker 1: more similar to humans than if you give them constraints
Speaker 1: on that. So there's a famous Cogno science study along
Speaker 1: those lines. Well, it makes perfectly good sense to me,
Speaker 1: and that really is what that fish bowl cartoon is about.
Speaker 1: You know, Creativity is variation within constraint. It's intelligent variation.
Speaker 1: And when you take the constraints away, when you make
Speaker 1: everything possible, it turns out nothing is possible. Now, is
Speaker 1: this going to be true of everybody? No, there are
Speaker 1: going to be people who actually can cope with a
Speaker 1: completely unconstrained environment and produce things that no one would
Speaker 1: ever have thought of and that are remarkable. But for
Speaker 1: the most of us, creativity comes with only when the
Speaker 1: possibilities are limited. Yeah, I see that, You see that improvisation,
Speaker 1: You see that in all sorts of stuff. No, I
Speaker 1: think it's just like it's like close to a universal truth. Now,
Speaker 1: what exactly are the right constraints? It's a complicated thing
Speaker 1: to figure out, of course, But the idea that the
Speaker 1: way you solve that problem is just by taking all
Speaker 1: the constraints away and letting people figure it out for themselves,
Speaker 1: I think is just irresponsible. Yeah, but you know, when
Speaker 1: you're teaching at the university, you really shouldn't be irresponsible
Speaker 1: about stuff like that. I agree. I'm just a couple
Speaker 1: more questions and we're done. I'm going to be very
Speaker 1: mindful of your time. You have another great quote, say
Speaker 1: the secret to happiness is low expectations. Yes, I love that.
Speaker 1: Now does that I mean does that apply to like
Speaker 1: the mating demean as well? I think so. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course that's an overstatement. I think the right way
Speaker 1: to say it, but it's not nearly as sexy is
Speaker 1: the secret to happiness is lower expectations. I like that?
Speaker 1: Or how about why don't you say good enough expects? Well,
Speaker 1: but you know it's you know this really it has
Speaker 1: stuck in people's minds is quote. And the reason I
Speaker 1: wrote that and say it is that I think we're
Speaker 1: living in a world of absurdly high expectations, at least
Speaker 1: among the quote elite, the highly educated and affluent people
Speaker 1: that only the best will do. They expect perfection, and
Speaker 1: the result is that whatever happens, no matter how good
Speaker 1: it is, is disappointing. So that with that as background,
Speaker 1: I think saying the secret to happiness is low expectations
Speaker 1: is okay because I'm saying it to people who have
Speaker 1: absurdly high expectations, you know. I think the insight here
Speaker 1: is that how satisfied we are within fairly broad limits,
Speaker 1: how satisfied we are with anything, is sort of how
Speaker 1: good it is in relation to how good we expected
Speaker 1: it to be. So there are two ways to be satisfied.
Speaker 1: One is for the thing to be really good, and
Speaker 1: the other is for your expectations to be really modest.
Speaker 1: You know, you will be happier if you have modest
Speaker 1: expectations and you eat a meal that exceeds them a
Speaker 1: little than if you have very high expectations and eat
Speaker 1: a much better meal that doesn't meet your expectations. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I don't expect anything out of this world that I
Speaker 1: think is maybe too extreme. I think, you know, you
Speaker 1: should expect things of the you know, goods and services
Speaker 1: you buy, and you should expect things of the people
Speaker 1: you interact with, but not too much. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk policy implications. Something I found very interesting the
Speaker 1: public polic implications you made is that you argue that
Speaker 1: income redistribution would make everyone better off. Do you still
Speaker 1: hold that argument? I do I do you know this?
Speaker 1: I think is a bit of overstatement on my part
Speaker 1: for dramatic effect, But the read the logic behind it's
Speaker 1: sort of obvious. How if you give poor people more
Speaker 1: money and thus more choice, you'll make them better off.
Speaker 1: Poor people have too few choices, so by giving them
Speaker 1: more choice to improve their lives. And the way to
Speaker 1: give them more choices by giving them more income, since
Speaker 1: in our society the limited income is really the choice constraint,
Speaker 1: it's the choice limited So that seems to me pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: So why is it that wealthy people would also be
Speaker 1: better off? Well, the argument there is that wealthy people
Speaker 1: have too much choice, so if you take some of
Speaker 1: their income away and thereby reduce their options, then you're
Speaker 1: moving them closer to the peak of the inverted you
Speaker 1: instead of the downside of it, so they end up
Speaker 1: better of And you know, I don't know that that's
Speaker 1: really true. First of all, if you're really rich, a
Speaker 1: lot of the choices you face are completely inconsequential, because
Speaker 1: if you make a mistake, you'll just get another version
Speaker 1: tomorrow and you won't give it a moment's thought. Or
Speaker 1: you'll have a staff of people who are making your
Speaker 1: choices for you. But you can imagine not rich, but
Speaker 1: you know, sort of upper middle class college professor types,
Speaker 1: lawyer types, not rich enough to have a staff, but
Speaker 1: basically rich enough so that they can have whatever they want.
Speaker 1: A plague by the problem of too many Where should
Speaker 1: we eat? In Philadelphia tonight, Hunt, there are twenty six
Speaker 1: thousand restaurants for us to choose from in a two
Speaker 1: mile radius. Where should we eat? Not if you're on
Speaker 1: a diet, not if you're on a diet, and not
Speaker 1: if you're making twenty thousand dollars a year. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: those restaurants that are available to the upper middle class
Speaker 1: are not available to the working class. And if you
Speaker 1: gave them a little bit more income, their choice set
Speaker 1: would expand and that would be good. And if you
Speaker 1: took that income away from the lawyer, his choicet would
Speaker 1: re reduce and that would be good. So that was
Speaker 1: the argument. I like it. And then the practical applications
Speaker 1: for like clinical disorders like depression. You think, do you
Speaker 1: think a major source of depression might be having too
Speaker 1: many choices? Well, I think a major source of stress
Speaker 1: and anxiety is having too many choices. It looks like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a correlation between maximizing score and score
Speaker 1: on paper and pencil measures of depression. Now it's just
Speaker 1: a correlation. So you know, maybe people are depressed because
Speaker 1: they keep on making decisions at disappointment to disappoint them.
Speaker 1: Maybe people are depressed because they can't pull the trigger,
Speaker 1: they can't make decisions at all. Maybe people are maximizers
Speaker 1: because they have made have a history of decisions that
Speaker 1: haven't worked out well, which is what has made them depressed,
Speaker 1: and it pushes them to you know, to adhere, to
Speaker 1: hire and higher standards. So you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the causal story is. Nobody does, but there's at
Speaker 1: least a correlation between them. And it's plausible to me
Speaker 1: that having a maximizing orientation in a world of unlimited
Speaker 1: choice is a contributor to depression. Is there a correlation
Speaker 1: between maximizing and neuroticism and the Big Five? We don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll run the study, go ahead, I'll
Speaker 1: put that up on but you're able to check it
Speaker 1: out ter make sure that somebody else hasn't done it.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Hey, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being so generously your time today and the incredible work
Speaker 1: you've done for all of us. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope
Speaker 1: you found this episode just as performative and popper looking
Speaker 1: if I did. If you don't read the show notes
Speaker 1: for this episode or your Pants episodes, you can go
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast dot com