With the advent of the music streaming services such as Spotify, Last.fm and Grooveshark, it has become possible to access millions of tracks within seconds. On paper, these services would appear to be a great tool for music discovery as you can flit seamlessly between any number of songs. However it is often the case that I'll open Spotify and find I'm unable to commit to choosing music to listen to simply because of the sheer number of options.
When I brought up this point at a group tutorial it seemed that others also experienced this inability to choose. We are not alone either, I wanted to look deeper into whether the number of available options has an effect on our decision making abilities generally and, on Googling 'too much choice' I found that a discourse had been opened which posits that it does.
The key proponent of this idea is psychologist Barry Schwartz, whose book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less describes how an abundance of choice in almost all aspects of western, consumer societies has led to more anxiety about our choices, and a hesitancy to make them for fear that we will regret our decision and dwell on what may have happened had we made a different choice.
He sums his theory up in this TED talk, citing some pretty compelling evidence and personal anecdotes that I found pretty relatable. You may choose to watch it....
No comments:
Post a Comment