Paradox of Choice

One word that I have been hearing much more often in recent times is ‘self-esteem’. There has been enough talk of self-esteem being an important component of the development of any individual. Be it the workplace or outside of it, I think that’s the only real thing that keeps people going. In this article, the part that struck me was “A lot of self-esteem is dependent on self-knowledge. Knowing what you want and what’s important to you”.

In some sense, every choice that we have made from childhood is to increase our (or our parents) self-esteem, be it the choice of trying to crack CAT or being a talented musician or even being acknowledged as a great employee at work. In the process, if it is something that we become passionate about, it was an added bonus.

But what I found interesting was this. There is a theory of ‘the Paradox of Choice’ (longish video of about 20 min) where the author says that the number of choices that we are presented with today in every phase of life has created a lot more dissatisfaction rather than providing the freedom that we would have expected it to provide. This is not just applicable to the decision to pick up the right kind of car but also making life and career choices. (bear with me while I try to make the connection)

One of the reasons choices creates dissatisfaction is that we are never sure if another choice would have been better. We really don’t know what we want and whether one is more important than the other. Earlier the ignorance of not knowing which was the better of the two cars – Premier or Ambassador was not large enough to cause dissonance. Today, with the number of choices, the dissonance is much higher….

A lot of us Indians now want to exercise an option of choosing our own partner. Applying the same theory here, can it be that we are never sure because suddenly we are expected to be having a lot of choice as opposed to the time when we had partners ‘arranged’. It seems as if there are a lot of options, yet the choice never seems perfect. There is always that small seed of doubt…could I have gotten a better deal???

So now if we take it that self-esteem is a function of self-knowledge and self-made expectations are we looking at a whole generation with lesser self-esteem which could progressively get worse with the amount of choices opening up? Maybe we are already seeing evidences of that….. the kids who are in their mid-teens have so much more choices to look at and decide what they want to do….phew…

Then the follow up questions, therefore are we also quick to decide a choice was wrong and take necessary steps to rectify the error (as demonstrated by the number of increasing divorces)? Is it necessarily a bad thing to decide later the choice was wrong?

Yet with all this would I still give up the option of making a choice? Highly unlikely….

Yet another irony of life…