THE COSTS OF EXCESS CHOICEWhen people are given too many choices, they may be less satisfied with what they have than when offered a smaller range of choices. Can there ever be too much of a good thing such as freedom and self-determination? Barry Schwartz (2000, 2004) contends that individualistic modern cultures indeed have “ an excess of freedom,” causing decreased life satisfaction and increased rates of clinical depression. Too many choices can lead to paralysis, or what Schwartz calls “the tyranny of freedom.” Consider: Ø After choosing from among 30 kinds of jams or chocolates, people express less satisfaction with their choices than those choosing from among 6 options (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). Ø Christopher Hsee and Reid Hastie (2006) illustrate how choice may enhance regret. Give employees a free trip to either Paris or Hawaii and they will be happy. But give them a choice between the two and they may be less happy. People who choose Paris may regret that it lacks the warmth and the ocean. Those who choose Hawaii may regret the lack of great museums. Ø Something like that may explain why the seniors from 11 colleges in one recent study who spent the most time seeking and assessing various job possibilities ended up with higher starting salaries but lower satisfaction (Iyengar & others, 2006). Jane Ebert and Daniel Gilbert discovered (2002) that people are generally happier with decisions when they can’t undo them. When participants in our experiments were able to undo their decisions they tended to consider both the positive and negative features of the decisions they had made. When they couldn’t undo their decisions they tended to concentrate on the good features and ignore the bad. Self-Serving Bias (Предрасположение в пользу своего Я) Contrary to the presumption that most people suffer from low self-esteem or feelings of inferiority, researchers consistently find that most people exhibit a self-serving bias. Many dozens of experiments have found that people attribute the success to their ability and effort, but they attribute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impossibility” (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999). Consider: Ø And how much responsibility do you suppose car drivers tend to accept for their accidents? On insurance forms, drivers have described their accidents in words such as these: “An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished” (неизвестно откуда взявшийся автомобиль, которого никто не видел, стукнул мою машину и как сквозь землю провалился); “As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision, and I did not see the other car” (Когда я выехал на перекресток, неожиданно показался забор); “A pedestrian hit me and went under my car” (Пешеход нанес мне удар и бросился под колеса) (Toronto News, 1977). Ø Managers often blame poor performance on workers’ lack of ability or effort (Imai, 1994; Rice, 1985). (Workers are more likely to blame something external— inadequate supplies (плохое снабжение), excessive workload (чрезмерная загруженность работой), difficult co-workers (несговорчивость коллег), ambiguous assignments.) Ø Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly (1979) observed a marital version of self-serving bias. They found that young married Canadians usually believed they took more responsibility for such activities as cleaning the house and caring for the children than their spouses credited them for. In a more recent study of 265 U.S. married couples with children, husbands estimated they did 42 percent of the housework. The wives estimated their husbands did 33 percent. When researchers tracked actual housework (by sampling participants’ activity at random times using beepers), they found husbands actually carrying 39 percent of the domestic workload (Lee & Waite, 2005). This “ bias blind spot” can have serious consequences during conflicts. If you’re negotiating with your roommate over who does household chores and you believe your roommate has a biased view of the situation, you’re much more likely to become angry (Pronin & Ross, 2006). Apparently we see ourselves as objective and everyone else as biased. No wonder we fight, because we’re each convinced we’re “right” and free from bias. Self-serving biases also inflate people’s judgments of their groups, a phenomenon called group-serving bias. When groups are comparable, most people consider their own group superior (Codol, 1976; Jourden & Heath, 1996; Taylor & Doria, 1981).
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