Reviews

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

sebph's review against another edition

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5.0

Bel libro, seppur non troppo recente (è del 2004) che illustra come avere troppe scelte a volte non è un vantaggio, e come le persone possono essere sopraffatte da tante opzioni. Buoni anche i suggerimenti su come gestire le scelte. Come al solito sembrano cose banali, una volta che le si è lette.

zellreads's review against another edition

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3.0

I found the statistics here to be well explained, and enjoyed learning about the psychology behind it. I thought the examples were well done, but I did feel that this book was somewhat repetitive. Overall an important topic to consider.

semvs's review against another edition

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3.0

If the author truly believes that less is more, he would have made this book ~50 pages and left his own opinions that governments should decide a majority of our decisions out of it. The book also contains doubtable studies or studies with missing important information, and the authors own little experiments.

The reason why I still enjoyed having read the book is that it distinguished two kinds of decision making:

1 Maximizing
Searching and accepting only the best, spending a lot of time into decision making,
ending up not being satisfied with the choice made.

2 Satisfying
Choosing something good (enough), not looking back and being satisfied with it.

While objectively, maximizers might end up with something that's better than what satisfiers end up with, satisfiers will be happier with the thing they chose.
If you're a maximizer, you should factor in the time it took to research and make the decision into the cost of the item or choice.

The book made me identify areas that I maximise in and to try to satisfy instead.

bethlovescake's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective relaxing fast-paced

4.25

jmarchek's review against another edition

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3.0

November 2018 Book Club Selection

_bookmoth's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.0

The book does what it says it does though at times it felt repetitive. I didn't gain a lot more new insights, but it is interesting to see these ideas backed up by research.

In a nutshell: limiting our choices will make us feel more satisfied and less regretful. These limitations should not be imposed on us. We need to be more aware of limiting our own choices to the things we really value. For personal freedom has made us sacrifice communal connection and meaning.

auspiciousdonut's review against another edition

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hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

anon27's review against another edition

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5.0

This was a very interesting read, though I was skeptical at first if the topic could warrant over 250 pages. It absolutely could, and it was interesting throughout the whole book. The content was easy to understand and very believable, I would recommend it to anyone.

soozasaurus_rex's review against another edition

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Very dated views. It has no business being as long as it is and ends up being repetitive and boring.

dmaurath's review against another edition

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4.0

Despite some of the dated references (e.g., long-distance phone service and video rentals), most of the advice here is timeless and valuable to revisit from time to time. While the book relies on some research and studies, it's not the typical pattern of pop psychology books with argument followed by evidence arranged by theme of argument. Instead, there is much original thinking here and reasonable solutions to the problem of too much choice.