The term Paradox of Choice, also the title of Barry Schwartz’s book on the pitfalls of decision making, pits freedom to choose, a desirable process, against the fact that choice leads often to less satisfaction. Not only can an overwhelming number of choices make you indecisive, but it generally produces less happiness with the outcome given the number of “missed” possible alternatives. Today I’ll introduce one of his other brilliant theorems – the distinction between people who are maximizers and those who are satisficers (a word creation from satisfied and suffice.)

(Full disclosure, Barry, who this year retired from a long and distinguished career at Swarthmore College, is a family friend. In fact another embarrassing moment of my life happened when visiting him at some coastal holiday and one of my kids decided then and there, age 4 or so, to make good on his threat to run away from home. Barefoot, no less. We all combed the woods of Tillamook County instead of talking psychology. Happy ending, I’m glad to report, other than having aged 20 years in two hours.)

 

Maximizers are people who only want the best, and are willing to put in the effort, time, energy and whatever other resource to get there. Satisficers are happy with something that’s good enough. Count me among them. Of course it’s never  a black and white picture. Most people fall somewhere in between, and for each of us we probably maximize in some areas of our lives while “good enough” rules the others. But it is certainly true that those who truly maximize, say at a job search, end up with objectively improved outcomes: they land better jobs and on average start with a 20% higher salary. Before you say anything: here is the dilemma. These people, subjectively, are much less happy with those outcomes than the satisficers who did not put much effort into the job search. Money ain’t buying happiness? Not even correlating to happiness!

And speaking of correlations: maximizers are on average more depressed than satisficers, and report lower satisfaction in life. Satisficers are found to make overall good decisions, just not the seemingly “perfect” ones. Interestingly enough there seem to be no gender differences in what category people tend to fall (although I have yet to find a male who is a maximizer when it comes to buying shoes….. girl friends, you know who you are….).