Barry Schwartz quotes

Everybody makes money for a living, but most of us actually do something that has a point, in addition to just making money. We examine and treat patients, we teach students, we draw up contracts and wills, we write for newspapers, magazines, and web sites, we clean floors, or we serve meals. (Barry Schwartz)
Too little attention is paid to the dark side of incentives. They are anything but a magic bullet. Psychologists have known this for years, but it seems largely hidden from the world of commerce.
Barry Schwartz
There is in American society, not only the the American society but more here than anywhere else, what I have come to call the official syllogism and this is a set of assumptions that we have about well-being and about how society should be organized that runs so deep that I think we don't realize we make them. And the only time you start to notice that you make them is when you can start to accumulate evidence that they are wrong. So what is this official syllogism?First, we all think that the more freedom people have, the more welfare they have. How could you think otherwise? This is [a] no-brainer. What argument could you make to suggest that there is anything wrong with this assumption?The second thing we think is that the more choice people have, the more freedom they have. What does freedom mean if not choice?
Barry Schwartz
[W]e should make an effort to limit how much we think about the attractive features of options we reject.
Barry Schwartz
[W]e must decide which choices in our lives really matter and focus our time and energy there, letting many other opportunities pass us by.
Barry Schwartz
[W]hat is most important to us, most of the time, is not the objective results of a decision, but the subjective results.
Barry Schwartz
Having too many choices produces psychological distress, especially when combined with regret, concern about status, adaptation, social comparison, and perhaps most important, the desire to have the best of everything-to maximize.
Barry Schwartz
[W]e now face a demand to make choices that is unparalleled in human history.
Barry Schwartz
[C]hoice in many facets of our life has gone from implicit and often psychologically unreal to explicit and psychologically very real.
Barry Schwartz
Identity is much less a thing people "inherit" than it used to be.
Barry Schwartz
[C]osmetic surgery is slowly shifting from being a procedure that people gossip about to being a commonplace tool for self-improvement. (Barry Schwartz)
Ask yourself what is the point of advertising prescription drugs... Clearly they... expect we will... demand that our doctors write the prescriptions.
Barry Schwartz
Filtering out extraneous information is one of the basic functions of our consciousness.
Barry Schwartz
A large array of options may discourage customers because it forces an increase in the effort that goes into making the decision. ...[T]hinking about the attractions of some of the unchosen options detracts from the pleasure derived from the chosen one.
Barry Schwartz
[W]hen face with overwhelming choice, we... become "pickers,"... we must be willing to rely on habits, customs, norms, and rules to make some decisions automatic.
Barry Schwartz
In an ideal world, nobody's work would be just about the money. People could pursue excellence in what they do, take pride in achievement, and derive meaning from knowing that their work improved the lives of others.
Barry Schwartz
Of course, bankers were always interested in making money. But when bankers had clients, they bore some responsibility for the clients' welfare.
Barry Schwartz
When you rely on incentives, you undermine virtues. Then when you discover that you actually need people who want to do the right thing, those people don't exist because you've crushed anyone's desire to do the right thing with all these incentives.
Barry Schwartz
[I]ncreased choice among goods and services may contribute little or nothing to the kind of freedom that counts. ...[I]t may impair freedom by taking time and energy we'd be better off devoting to other matters.
Barry Schwartz
We almost have an unlimited variety of phones, especially in the world of cell phones. ...It is not possible to buy a cell phone that doesn't do too much.
Barry Schwartz
When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases... the autonomy, control and liberation... are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects... begin to appear. As the... choices grow further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize. (Barry Schwartz)
Americans spend more time shopping than the members of any other society. ...more often than they go to houses of worship, and Americans now have more shopping centers than high schools. ...[P]eople are shopping more now but enjoying it less.
Barry Schwartz
Responsibility for medical care has landed on the... patient with a resounding thud. ...The tenor of medical practice has shifted from... the all-knowing, paternalistic doctor... to one in which the doctor arrays the possibilities... along with the likely pluses and minuses... and the patient makes the choice.
Barry Schwartz
I want to start with what I call the official dogma... of all Western industrial societies... "If we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens... maximize individual freedom. ...The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice."
Barry Schwartz
It is no longer the case in the United States that you go to the doctor and the doctor tells you what to do. Instead... the doctor tells you "Well we could do A or we could do B. A has these benefits and these risks. B has these benefits and these risks. What do you want to do?" ...We call it patient autonomy... but what it really is, is a shifting of the burden and responsibility for decision making from somebody who knows something... to someone who knows nothing and is almost certainly sick, and thus not in the best shape to be making decisions...
Barry Schwartz