Counselling Central

The following article was published in the Telegraph.

Modern life is making us miserable because we have too much choice, claims new research. From the foods we eat to the television channels we watch to the schools we send our children to and the career we choose to pursue, society has never offered us so much variety.

But while the ability to choose is generally a good thing, too much freedom of choice is crippling us with indecision and making us unhappy, claims the new research published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Professor Hazel Rose Markus, the author from Stanford University’s Department of Psychology, said: “We cannot assume that choice as understood by educated, affluent Westerners is a universal aspiration and that the provision of choice will necessarily foster freedom and well-being. Even in contexts where choice can foster freedom, empowerment and independence, it is not an unalloyed good. Choice can also produce a numbing uncertainty, depression and selfishness.”

The authors looked at a body of research into the cultural ideas surrounding choice. They found that among non-Western cultures and among working-class Westerners, freedom and choice are less important or mean something different than they do for university educated people. Professor Markus said her study, which focused on Americans, applied to all middle-class Westerners: “Americans live in a political, social and historical context that advances personal freedom, choice and self-determination above all else. Contemporary psychology has proliferated this emphasis on choice and self-determination as the key to healthy psychological functioning.”

Although I agree with the idea that too much choice is not good for some people, I struggle with the idea that this is only an issue for ’middle-class university educated’ people in Western cultures. Psychologically when do you stop being working-class and become middle-class? Can we assume that all middle-class Westerners think the same way? Can we assume that no working-class Westerners experience this issue? How do you feel about this research?