To choose or not to choose

A sign of acute face-recognition paralysis (where you look at a face and you fail to recognize the person) is when you read an article about an author, wonder if he is the same man who taught you 30 years ago in graduate school, google him to his current university, stare at the clear and large photo and still cannot tell.
Barry Schwartz, once prof at U of C is, I believe, NOT the Barry Schwartz discussed in today’s New Yorker article on making choices. It doesn’t help that he shares the name, age, and field (social psychology) of my former prof, but I believe I am confident in concluding that this is not the man I vaguely recall from my first year soc class (he left Chicago soon after).

It was a fairly interesting article in any event, as it talked of the phenomenon that Schwartz (not MY Schwartz, but Schwartz nonetheless) describes in his newest text – that of mischoosing. From the perspective of an economist (eg Hirschman, who I think is NOT the same guy who taught me economic sociology back at Chicago – no, that was HIRSCH, that’s right. Or was it Herschfeld? No, that was the Nina guy. Okay, sorry) this may be identified in a theory of disappointment, which is described thus:

The world…is one in which men think they want one thing and then upon getting it, find out to their dismay that they don’t want it nearly as much as they thought or don’t want it at all and that something else, of which they were hardly aware, is what they really want.

Basically, we are horridly indecisive, we waffle, then regret, and rarely are we satisfied with that which we took forever to choose (an example of a car is given). We study intently ads of things we’ve already purchased in the hope of convincing ourselves that we made the right decision and still we are convinced that we failed in our selection.

Yes, that’s right. This just makes people like me – accused of being terribly and regrettably impulsive – look so good! Great article. Yes, definitely, quite accurate. Yep, no doubt, go with that one.