When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?

Citation: Sheena Iyengar, Mark Lepper When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?.
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Summary

The authors of this article go against the assumption that personal choices lead to positive affective and motivational consequences; they claim that when people are offered a limited array of choices, they are more likely to buy and more likely to be satisfied with their selections. To support their claim, the authors present three studies that provide compelling empirical evidence that the provision of extensive choices, though initially appealing to choice-makers, may nonetheless undermine choosers' subsequent satisfaction and motivation.

In study 1, consumers shopping at an upscale grocery store encountered a tasting booth that displayed either a limited or extensive selection of different flavors of jam. Then customers’ motivation was measured by their initial attraction to the tasting booth and then their subsequent purchase of the product.

In study 2, students in an introductory social psychology class were given the opportunity to write a two-page essay as an extra-credit assignment. Students were given either 6 or 30 potential essay topics on which they could choose to write. Intrinsic motivation was assessed by comparing the percent of students who completed the assignment across the two conditions and by the quality of the essays written in each condition.

In Study 3, participants initially made a selection from either a limited array or an extensive array of chocolates. Subsequently, participants in the experimental groups sampled the chocolate of their choosing, whereas participants in the control group sampled a chocolate that was chosen for them. Participants’ initial satisfaction with the choosing process, their expectations concerning the choices they had made, their subsequent satisfaction with their sampled chocolates, and their later purchasing behavior served as the four main dependent measures in this study.

Study 1 showed that although more consumers were attracted to a tasting booth when the display included 24 flavors of jam rather than 6, consumers were subsequently much more likely to purchase jam if they had encountered the display of only 6 jams. In addition, study 2revealed that students were more likely to write an essay for extra credit when they were provided a list of only 6, rather than 30, potential essay topics. Moreover, even after having chosen to write an essay, students wrote higher quality essays when their essay topic had been picked from a smaller rather than a larger choice set. Finally, study 3 demonstrated that people reported enjoying the process of choosing a chocolate more from a display of 30 than from a display of 6. However, despite their greater initial enjoyment in the extensive-display condition, participants proved more dissatisfied and regretful of the choices they made and were subsequently considerably less likely to choose chocolates rather than money as compensation for their participation.