This is fascinating... In 1985 my wife Deanna and I visited East Berlin.
After visiting a supermarket, where we saw many clear plastic bags of frozen
identical but unnamed green things as constituting the frozen vegetable
section,
we walked outside and found, on the corner of the building, a sign behind a
glass case, reading, "Wer hat die Wahl, hat auch die Qual." Translated: Who
has a choice, has also the torment/agony. (In German there is a phrase, "Die
Quahl der Wal" meaning, the agony/torment/torture of choice) .
It seemed at the time a piece of propaganda reminding people they really
didn't want to be tortured by having to make choices (eg, between various green
frozen things).
And yet I don't know many people who'd switch places.... It does make me
wonder about his research.... Alistair
<<I recently read a April 2004 Scientific American article called The
Tyranny of Choice by Barry Schwartz. I first learned of his research
from a reference in Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman.
In a nutshell, not having choice leads to disappointment but having
many choices and "choosing wrong" leads to regret. Apparently regret
is a greater detriment to happiness than disappointment.
Lessons from the article are:
- Choose when to choose
- Learn to accept "good enough"
- Don't worry about what you're missing
- Control expectations
So, triggered by the talk about Optional Scope contracts, I'm
wondering if I or others have observed the "tyranny of choice"
phenomenon manifested as resistance to introducing a more flexible
scope approach.
Don't know where I'm going with this yet... probably need to do more
observations and reflect a bit more first...>>
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