Picture this: you walk into a bar, packed with hotties. I’m talking tons. Everywhere you turn, everyone is your type. Fast-forward 10 minutes, how many do you think you’ve spoken to? I’ll give you a hint: 0-3 tops
The Curse of Choice
People often find themselves asking for choices, but when choices are actually offered, they are rarely used. Do more choices lead to better success rates and more satisfied clients? Truth is, they don’t.
Sparkology is very familiar with the theory behind the “curse of choice”. Rather than overwhelm your brain, we believe in providing you with the cream of the crop and narrowing your search for you.
Barry Schwartz, psychology professor at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of choice: Why More is Less, states that having increased options doesn’t necessarily make people happy. As the number of choices increase, negative aspects begin to appear. Additionally he states, “as the number of choices grows even further, we become less satisfied with the options we’re given, and the negatives escalate until we become overloaded.”
Here are the facts:
- Your brain works through process of elimination. Rather than choosing what you want, you are more likely to eliminate what you don’t want. Therefore, more choices generally just means more work.
- The more you need to eliminate the harder it is to choose one thing.
- Many psychologists have actually found that there may in fact be a correlation between people’s sense of unhappiness and the amount of choices available to them.
- When people are faced with excessive possible selections research shows that people suffer from depression, grief, and sadness
While some choice is good, too many choices are not! This also explains the reasoning behind filters. At Sparkology, we’ve done the filtering for you. While we don’t have the millions of profiles you’d find on OKCupid or Match, we have people you actually want to meet. If you find yourself using a filter, you too believe in the curse of choice and agree with our research.