The Maximization Paradox: The costs of seeking alternatives q Ilan Dar-Nimrod a, * , Catherine D. Rawn a, * , Darrin R. Lehman a , Barry Schwartz b a Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z4 b Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081-1397, USA article info Article history: Received 28 August 2008 Received in revised form 17 December 2008 Accepted 7 January 2009 Available online 6 February 2009 Keywords: Maximizing tendencies Satisficers Choice-making strategies Customer satisfaction Sacrifice Assortment size abstract Contrary to the common belief that more options lead to better decisions, recent research has demon- strated that choosing from a large number of options can have detrimental psychological effects. We investigated whether people were willing to sacrifice resources for more options, and whether choice- making orientation moderated such willingness. As predicted, people who were motivated to make the best choice possible—‘‘maximizers”—were more willing to sacrifice resources such as time to attain a lar- ger choice array than were people who tend to search for a satisfactory choice (i.e., ‘‘satisficers”). Addi- tionally, maximizers who sacrificed to attain more options were ultimately less satisfied with their choice relative to maximizers who chose from a small assortment, and to satisficers (Studies 2 and 3). We term the pattern in which maximizers tend to sacrifice resources to attain more options that ulti- mately reduce their satisfaction, the ‘‘Maximization Paradox”. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Imagine it is Friday evening and you are going to the movies, although you are not sure which movies are currently playing. You debate going to one of two cinemas, equal in price and ambi- ance. SuperCity Theatre offers 12 movie screens; whereas Town Cinema offers only four screens. Assuming the same types of mov- ies usually play at both cinemas, which would you choose? All else being equal, the larger theatre is the rational alternative. Theoretically, increasing assortment size should increase the like- lihood that a person’s preference can be satisfied (Schwartz, 2004). Indeed, much research has demonstrated that people tend to prefer more rather than fewer options. For example, people are more attracted to arrays of 30 jams than to arrays of six jams (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000), and to arrays of 50 ice cream flavors than to arrays of 10 ice cream flavors (Rozin, Fischler, Shields, & Masson, 2006). Yet people are less satisfied with outcomes chosen from lar- ger assortments rather than smaller assortments (Chernev, 2003; Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Lee & Lee, 2004; Schwartz, 2004, 2000). Schwartz (2004) identified people’s attraction to, yet dissatisfac- tion with larger assortments rather than smaller assortments the ‘‘Paradox of Choice.” In this paper, we propose that individual dif- ferences in choice-making orientation moderate costs associated with the ‘‘Paradox of Choice”. Although people tend be attracted to larger assortments, only some (i.e., maximizers) may be willing to make sacrifices such as time, energy, or money, in order to glean those larger assortments—sacrifices that ultimately lead to dissat- isfaction with the chosen alternative. We propose the term ‘‘Max- imization Paradox” to reflect this moderated ‘‘Paradox of Choice.” Choice-making orientation (Schwartz et al., 2002) is an individ- ual difference variable that differentiates people based on their ap- proach to making decisions. At one extreme, maximizing describes the tendency to approach choices with the goal of finding the ‘‘best” possible alternative. At the other extreme, satisficing de- scribes the tendency to approach choices with the goal of finding an option that is ‘‘good enough” according to their threshold of acceptability. 1 Maximizers may be particularly likely to value larger assortments more than smaller assortments in their quest for the best, and this may seem to be a logical approach: the chances of find- ing an ideal alternative may seem greater when one has more op- tions rather than fewer from which to choose. Past research has shown that maximizers remember experiencing more dissatisfaction with their past choices than do satisficers (Schwartz et al., 2002). We sought to extend these earlier findings and predicted the Maximiza- tion Paradox. Because of their desire to obtain the best option, max- imizers will be willing to sacrifice resources in order to attain larger assortments, yet they will experience dissatisfaction with their selection from this larger assortment. 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.01.007 q The first two authors contributed equally to this manuscript and are listed alphabetically. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. * Corresponding authors. Tel.: +1 604 822 2442; fax: +1 604 822 6923. E-mail addresses: ilan@psych.ubc.ca (I. Dar-Nimrod), cdrawn@psych.ubc.ca (C.D. Rawn). 1 Although we refer to ‘‘maximizers” and ‘‘satisficers” for ease of discussion, this individual difference variable is considered a unidimensional continuum (see Schwartz et al. (2002)). Personality and Individual Differences 46 (2009) 631–635 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid