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Show notes

Western societies seemingly value choice over almost everything else. Sometimes however, having lots of similar options is just confusing and overwhelming.

There are various ways in which too much choice can be harmful to our finances. We delay choosing, stick to default options, make worse choices and are less satisfied by our choices, even when they are good.

We discuss the research of Sheena Iyengar especially her research papers with Mark Lepper about choosing jam (opens as pdf) and Wei Jiang and Gur Huberman about pension schemes. We mention Sheena’s TED talk.

Martha also talks about pleasurable choice, using video games as an example, and references this video about the illusion of choice in video game design by Extra Credits.

No tips this week, we’re doing all of them in part 2!