The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz.
Ecco, 2004. $13.95 — 288 pp.

Shopping for pencils is something my wife and I do regularly. Our three school-age children, their perpetual homework, and our beleaguered pencil sharpener chew through pencils at a rapid clip.

So we periodically go in search of these writing instruments at the Great Discount Store. It ought to be a simple exercise. But it is not. During a recent trip to the GDS, I took stock of the withering array of choices confronting the contemporary pencil shopper.

You can choose regular, pre-sharpened or mechanical. Standard wood pencils alone come in a breathtaking range of colors, including platinum, fireworks glitter (with matching eraser), American flag, smiley face, school bus yellow, bendy bright flexible, “natural,” and cheetah skin (faux, I presume).

The choices among mechanical pencils are downright overwhelming. Do you want 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm lead? Do you prefer regular, high polymer, or super high polymer lead? Would you prefer side-lead advance or top-lead advance? And oh the grip choices: ergo grip, triangular grip, curve comfort grip, funky foam, click eraser grip (whatever that is), super squishy grip with glitter, and on and on.

Swarthmore psychology professor Barry Schwartz explains in The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, that more shopping options do not necessarily lead to greater shopper satisfaction. In fact, Schwartz explains, when the array of choices expands beyond a few, angst is not far behind.

Schwartz describes a study of two groups of shoppers: the first could choose among six jams to taste, and the second group could choose among 24 varieties. In both instances, customers received a coupon for $1 off a jar of their choosing. The display table with 24 jam types drew a bigger crowd, but in both instances customers sampled about the same amount of jams. And, customers at the six-jam table actually bought more; in fact, they purchased 10 times more! Only 3 percent of the bewildered customers at the 24-jam table made a purchase; 30 percent of the six-jam samplers did.

“A large array of options may discourage customers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making a decision,” Schwartz said. He also noted that for those who did buy one of the 24 jams, the satisfaction of the decision was diminished by the 23 other “what if?” taste possibilities.

The Paradox of Choice also details a personality type that suffers perpetually in the modern world’s panoply of options. The Maximizer is someone who seeks and accepts only the best — “good enough” is not an option. “A maximizer can’t be certain that she has found the best sweater unless she’s looked at all the sweaters,” Schwartz explains. “She can’t know that she is getting the best price until she’s checked out all the prices.” Shop ‘til you drop is not a carnival for Maximizers; it’s a compulsion.

Schwartz contrasts Maximzers with Satisficers — persons who choose quickly among the choices easily available ... and don’t look back. “To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better,” he writes. Strive to be a Satisficer, Schwartz suggests. His book even includes strategies for moving in that direction.

But beyond calming our shopping psyches, are we really better off as people, as a nation, with 108 types of breakfast cereal and 42 kinds of cordless phones?

Schwartz notes that Americans have erected more shopping centers than high schools and travel to these meccas of merchandise more often than they visit houses of worship. Shopping was the top choice of activities for 93 percent of teen-age girls surveyed recently. Not music, nor time with friends, nor reading, nor sports. Shopping. How thoroughly tragic.

And what of the bullied young factory workers in Bangladesh who spend 12 hour days, six days a week cranking out cheap pencils — of every type and color? This Valentine’s Day chocolate buyers were reminded that more than a third of the world’s cocoa beans come from Ghana and Ivory Coast — where 90 percent of the farms use forced child labor. Somehow those chocolates are not so sweet.

What does it mean to be swimming in choices while others are drowning in poverty? Frustration in the midst of overwhelming abundance. The Paradox of Choice reminds me of the saying: “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” That’s a truth you can write with the plainest of pencils.

(Kevin Lee is an educator and writer who lives near Canton.)