 Are you a victim of the overchoice effect? From clothes to phones to retirement plans, people today have an incredible amount of options to choose from. This is supposed to be a good thing, right? The more options there are, the easier it should be to find our perfect phone, jeans, or whatever else. In reality, studies have shown that having too many choices can actually have pretty negative consequences. This is called the overchoice effect. In 1974, the American Marketing Association published an article first demonstrating this effect. Researchers Jacobi, Speller, and Kohn had subjects choose between a variety of laundry detergents. In the end, they found that when they presented subjects with more types of laundry detergent and more information about the detergents, subjects ended up choosing worse products. An article published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed a similar study. Researchers Eingart and Lepper provided subjects with a variety of jams. They discovered that while more choices seemed appealing, customers were actually less likely to buy something the more options there were, and those that did buy something were less satisfied with their choice. Our capitalist society isn't looking too hot now, is it? For some reason, when people have more options, they make worse decisions and feel dissatisfied with their choices. According to the psychologist Barry Schwartz, the reason people feel worse when they have more options is that they are trying to pick the best option. Moreover, people will always feel like they have chosen, or could have chosen something better. Happily, the overchoice effect can be avoided. An article found that the overchoice effect can be reduced by other variables, like time. For instance, subjects who have more time to assess their choices don't experience dissatisfaction after making their choices. The Journal of Cognitive Psychology published an article expanding this research in 2016. They discovered that while most of the research on the overchoice effect only looked at adults, thus excluding other age groups. So they ran a study that looked at how the overchoice effect worked on children, teenagers, adults, and elders by means of the cookie study. At a restaurant in Italy, researchers set up different arrangements of cookies, a small display with fewer choices, and a large display with more choices. They randomly asked restaurant goers if they would like to participate. After the subjects were chosen, they were randomly assigned to a small display or the large display, where they had to choose a cookie, take a survey about how they felt about their choice, eat the cookie, and then take another survey about how satisfied they felt. The study found that while teenagers and adults both experienced the negative feelings associated with the overchoice effect, children and elders did not. The researchers concluded that this was probably because of their different approaches to making their decisions. Children usually have very strong opinions about their preferences and know exactly what they like. Teenagers tend to make choices that are good enough and not the best. Adults and teenagers often try to pick what they think is the best option overall, which is why they become disappointed in the end. So are you a victim of the overchoice effect? Do you try to pick the best option and feel unsatisfied when it's not perfect? If you do, try taking a different approach. It could help your mood to pick up what's good enough like elders do or what appeals to you most individually. In the end, it's your choice. Comment below about how you've managed to overcome the overchoice effect. And don't forget to subscribe for more Psych2Go!