Cut the number of choices you make each day. Your brain will thank you

WASHINGTON, July 18, (AP): Jeans that fit perfectly. The ideal Netflix show for a Tuesday night. Your one and only soulmate. Modern life promises that with enough options, you will happily find the best of everything. But behavioral scientists say the increasing flood of choices - whether it comes to shopping, social lives or relationships - is doing the opposite.

The idea that more choice is better is baked into Western culture, but research shows that having more options can make people anxious, indecisive and, paradoxically, less happy with what they pick, said Barry Schwartz, an emeritus psychology professor at Swarthmore University and author of "The Paradox of Choice.” "There have been hundreds of studies showing that there can be too much of a good thing,” Schwartz said.

To minimize the mental noise, he said, limit the number of choices you make, and your brain will thank you for it. Schwartz offered several examples of cases where more options left people worse off. In the case of Medicare Part D prescription drug plans, people in states with more choices were less likely to choose any of them, he said.

The same goes for 401(k) investments. The more options a company had, the less likely employees were to sign up, even when the employer offered matching money. Less consequential choices are no different. Schwartz pointed to one often-cited study that showed shoppers at a gourmet grocery store bought more jars of artisanal jam when they were presented with six flavors rather than with a wider array of 24.

In a follow-up study, students were more likely to complete an extra-credit assignment when they were given six topics to choose from instead of 30. Schwartz’s research expanded on those findings to learn the emotional responses to this phenomenon. "Instead of being liberated by all this choice, you’re paralyzed,” he said.

"You can do anything, and you can’t figure out which of those many things to do.” People also often end up making worse decisions since more options suggest more potentially bad outcomes, he said.

And once someone finally decides from all the possibilities, they may be less satisfied with even a good choice because they fear there was a better alternative. Schwartz said the satisfaction problem is especially acute for people whose aim is to get the best, whom psychologists call maximizers. "People who are maximizers especially suffer from the proliferation of options,” he said. "Only the best will do.”