Choice

This article reminds me of a dinner about 20 years ago with a friend from Sweden. He asked for a coke and the waiter responded, "What kind? We have Classic Coke, caffiene-free coke, diet, cherry, diet cherry, and caffiene-free diet coke." My friend looked at me and said. "That's the problem with America, you have too many choices."

From a NYT book review of "The Art of Choosing"...

Sheena Iyengar is the psychologist responsible for the famous jam experiment. You may have heard about it: At a luxury food store in Menlo Park, researchers set up a table offering samples of jam. Sometimes, there were six different flavors to choose from. At other times, there were 24. (In both cases, popular flavors like strawberry were left out.)

Shoppers were more likely to stop by the table with more flavors. But after the taste test, those who chose from the smaller number were 10 times more likely to actually buy jam: 30 percent versus 3 percent. Having too many options, it seems, made it harder to settle on a single selection.