I can't even remember where I read about Paradox of Choice. All in all, it wasn't the most interesting book I read. I flipped through a lot of the pages but did read many passages with a lot of interesting thoughts. There are a lot of passages from this one and honestly each deserve their own posts, but I figure let's document this first, I can always come back to them.

Participants in a laboratory study were asked to listen to a pair of very loud, unpleasant noises played through headphones. One noise lasted for eight seconds. The other lasted sixteen. The first eighteen seconds of second noise were identical to the first noise, whereas the second eight seconds, while still loud and unpleasant, were not as loud. Later, the participants, were told that they would have to listen to one of the noises again, but that they could choose which one. Clearly, the second to be repeated. Why? Because whereas both noises were unpleasant and had the same aversive peak, the second had a less unpleasant end, and so was remembered as less annoying than the first.

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When asked about what they regret the most in the last six months, people tend to identify actions that didn't meet expectations. But when asked about what they regret the most when they look back on their lives as a whole, people tend to identify failures to act. In the short run, we regret a bad educational choice, whereas in the long run, we regret a missed educational opportunity. In the short run, we regret a broken romance, whereas in the long run, we regret a missed romantic opportunity. So it seems that we don't close the psychological door on decisions we've made, and as time passes, what we've failed to do looms larger and larger.

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The fundamental significance of having control was highlighted in a study of three-month-old infants done more than thirty years ago. Infants in one group - those who had control - were placed in a faceup in an ordinary crib with their heads on a pillow. Mounted on the crib was a translucent umbrella, with figures of various animals dangling from the springs inside. These figures were not visible to the infants, but if the infants turned their heads on the pillows, a small light would go on behind the umbrella, making the "dancing" figures visible for a little while. Then the light would go off. When the infants did turn their heads, just by chance, and turned on the light and saw the dancing figures, hey showed interest, delight, and excitement. They quickly learned to keep the figures visible by turning their heads, and they kept on doing so, again and again. They also continued to show delight at the visual spectacle. Other infants in the study got a "free ride." Whenever a "control" infant turned on the light behind the umbrella in its crib, that action also turned on the light behind the umbrella in the crib of another infant. So these other infants got to see the dancing figures just as often and for just as long as their controlling partners did. Initially, these infants showed just as much delight in the dancing figures. But their interest quickly waned. They adapted.

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People do differ in the types of predispositions they display. "Optimists" explain success with chronic, global, and personal causes and failures with transient, specific, and universal ones. "Pessimists" do the reverse. Optimists say things like "I got an A" and "She gave me a C." Pessimists say things like "I got a C" and "He gave me an A." And it is the pessimists who are candidates for depression. When these predispositions are assessed in people who are not depressed, the predispositions predict who will become depressed when failures occur. People who find chronic causes for failure expect failures to persist: those who find transient causes don't. People who find global causes for failure expect failure to follow them into every area of life; those who find specific causes don't. And people who find personal causes for failure suffer large losses in self-esteem; those who find universal causes don't.

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I think the power of nonreversible decisions comes through most clearly when we think abut our most important choices. A friend once told me how his minister had shocked the congregation with a sermon on marriage in which he said flatly that, yes, the grass is always greener. What he meant was that, inevitably, you will encounter people who are younger, better looking, funnier, smarter, or seemingly more understanding and empathetic than your wife or husband. But finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and "trading up." The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, "I'm simply not going there. I've made my decision about a life partner, so this person's empathy or that person's good looks really have nothing to do with me. I'm not in the market - end of story." Agonizing over whether your love is "the real thing" or your sexual relationship above or below par, and wondering whether you could have done better is a prescription for misery, Knowing that you've made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have rather than consistently second-guessing it.

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As the number of choices we face increases, freedom of choice eventually becomes a tryanny of choice. Routine decisions take so much time and attention that it becomes difficult to get through the day. In circumstances like this, we should learn to view limits on the possibilities we face as liberating not constraining. Society provides rules, standards, and norms for making choices, and individual experience creates habits. By deciding to follow a rule (for example, always wear a seat belt; never drink more than two glasses of wine in one evening), we avoid having to make a deliberate decision again and again. This kind of rule-following frees up time and attention that can be devoted to thinking about choices and decisions to which rules don't apply.

Lots of food for thought.