In an earlier post, I mentioned how nowadays people have so many sources of news and entertainment that it is hard to find a common base of knowledge and experiences with other people. It is surprising when one encounters someone who has seen a film or read a book that you have too. Nowadays, it seems like the best we can do is to recommend to each other what each of us has been exposed to that the other hasn’t.
It struck me that when I was growing up in Sri Lanka, people did have a lot of cultural experiences in common but that was because we had an extremely limited menu to pick from. When it came to western music, for example, we had just one radio channel that broadcast in English for just about eight hours per day and of those only about three were devoted to popular music. So all of us had the same exposure to whatever records the announcers chose to play for us. Very few people could afford to buy their own records. While we knew the same singers and songs, there were a huge number singers and groups that we had never heard of, especially non-mainstream ones.
It was the same with films. There were just about five theaters that showed English films and that was in the capital city Colombo. In the smaller town that I spent my middle and high school years in, there were just two theaters. Hence pretty much everyone would see the same films and we could talk about them. These theaters had contracts with the film distributors that required them to show not just good films but also the bad ones and because we were starved for films, we would see a wide variety of them. Many of them were really good, some were arty films that were above my adolescent mind (such as The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), while others were real stinkers (such as Valley of the the Dolls) that we laughed all the way through because they were so bad.
Nowadays I find it difficult trying to pick a film that I might like to watch as I scroll through the menus of streaming services with their seemingly infinite offerings. It gets even more difficult if there are a group of you trying to agree on something.
I am definitely not arguing that having highly restricted choices is a good thing. I enjoy the fact that I can now see films and hear music that were not available to me growing up. But it did have the benefit that one could always find common topics to talk to others about.
Figuring out what to watch in a group: work from categories downward. Start with comedy, sci fi, fantasy, crime, documentary, nature. Then narrow it down further by director or concept. Sci-fi? How about space opera, or time travel, or alien encounters? In time travel we can quickly rattle off options -- there are maybe 30. Or if it’s crime: how about a Coen brothers movie? Have you seen Buster Scruggs how about that? Etc. you can also make the decision tree arbitrary -- how about depressing, uplifting, or just silly?
What you’re talking about here and in previous posts sounds like the idea of “cultural literacy” that E.D. Hirsch coined in his book of that name back in 1988.
I discussed E. D. Hirsch and his idea of cultural literacy back in 2018.
Hirsch’s idea isn’t even that new… I was raised an atheist, but my father (scientist, originally catholic) insisted I have a classical education in literature, including reading the bible. He said I’d never be able to understand or appreciate any literature if I didn’t understand the biblical (and other) references in it. This was in the mid 80s.
Of course I was a rebellious teen (or just a nerd), turned to science fiction and fantasy, and am now exasperated with my father that he doesn’t see or appreciate the many references to classic SF/fantasy in modern movies or other popular culture.
There was a book about this, “The Paradox of Choice”, the thesis of which, I believe, was that too many choices causes discomfort and dissatisfaction. The authors instanced items in supermarkets: when there were, say, 20 brands of mustard on the shelves, shoppers were overwhelmed or otherwise found it unsatisfactory. I remember that the researchers found that three or four choices was the optimum for such items, giving variation, but also not causing psychic discomfort.
I know that I am easily overwhelmed, and so I never look at streaming services or the inifinite choices of things to read online, or surf site like Facebook or YouTube. The latter, particularly, gives the feeling of living in Jorge Luis Borges’ story, “The Library of Babel”, in which the universe is a library that contains every possible variation of everything that can possibly be written. People are born into a carrel and spend their lives traveling from one carrel to another, endlessly reading, searching for writing that even has some meaning, but always knowing that the vast universe of unread writing is endless.
Borges was a true prophet.
garnetstar, not everyone is bothered by a large number of options.
John, please read the book. The research is pretty solid. All people are “bothered” at some point by a large number of options.
When you’ve read the book and thoroughly vetted their research and their conclusions, then you can give your reasons for a contrary view. But until then, you are just making ignorant statements.
What, I’m ignorant about my own response to lots of choice?
(I do have Netflix, I do go to supermarkets. Never experienced what you claim is true.
What bothers me is that 90% of everything is crap, and of the remainder, 9% is mediocre)
PS, garnetstar, have you considered you might be the exception rather than the rule?
I mean, streaming services are very, very popular.
And if supermarkets thought they could make more profit by restricting their shoppers’ choices, wouldn’t they do that?
@John Morales(#(9):
Proctor & Gamble decided to reduce the number of variants of Head & Shoulders, the sales in supermarkets went up 10%.
Another research reduced the number of types of pens available from 20 to 6, sales went up 20%.
It is just that most owners of supermarkets react the same way you do. “OH NO we cannot reduce choice or we won’t sell stuff” without anything to back them up.
Who Cares:
🙂
Sure, supermarket owners probably aren’t very cluey.
If only they knew about this stuff!
(I guess Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney and the other streaming services aren’t with it, either)
The Aldi supermarket chain is expanding in the area where I live, and people seem to love it. I wonder if some of their joy comes from Aldi’s stocking decisions. It’s a small store and they only have what they have. Made-up examples for illustration: Want lemons? Sorry, they only have oranges. Want wheat bread? They only have white. Looking for spicy brown mustard? Nope, just yellow American. Sure, it takes you 15 minutes to do the week’s shopping, but you’re eating the same meals 3 of those days.
In the USA, pre-cable tv and pre-streaming, most people watched the 3 networks and maybe PBS, so it there was a shared experience. More people watched special events like the last episode of M*A*S*H or The Day After Tomorrow, giving people a shared experience to talk about.
John @8 and 9, please learn to read. I said that I know that *I* am easily overwhelmed, not that everyone else is as easily as me.
But yes, as the book demonstrates, *all* people at some point become discomforted by too much choice.
@John Morales(#11):
So what if the brand owners are big. The people at the top are not the ones that determine what goes into a particular store (and don’t claim you didn’t know that when you made that misleading argument). It are the franchise owners, store managers or the people one layer above the store manager who do that. And those are the ones who scream “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!!!!1!!111!” when you suggest reducing the amount of choice. No one at the top is going to risk their franchise owners to walk away or store/area managers quitting, combine that with that these people know better what a store sells best in an area (I have 3 stores of a big brand close, two in walking distance the third by bike, all three have a different assortment ,YUP/student, family, weekly shopping) and choice reduction won’t be enforced on brand level.
That is why we only get proof that there is something as too much choice is when a producer like Proctor & Gamble reduces the amount of different variants of a product that are available to be put on shelves.
Optimum choice range is 5 to 7. And yes that also counts for online shops and streaming services.
Streaming services already have the option though, it is just that the customer has to do the leg work as Marcus Ranum (#1) pointed out.
And for anecdotal evidence: Deodorant, nearest store has a well known brand with 12 versions of their product so I skip that (what is the one that works for my specific circumstances?) to get the slightly less well known brand which has 2 versions.
OK, the actual post is uncontroversial.
In a given population, the fewer the choices to be had, the more commonality of choices and therefore shared experiences that population will have. And people tend to find comfort in shared experiences.
—
On the digression, I reckon this attitude of “I read it in a book, therefore it’s proven true!” is rather naive.
garnetstar:
What makes you imagine I can’t read?
This is what you wrote: “There was a book about this, “The Paradox of Choice”, the thesis of which, I believe, was that too many choices causes discomfort and dissatisfaction.”
You did not restrict that to people like you, but rather as a generalisation.
An universal claim, which a single counterexample falsifies. I am one such counterexample.
Clearly, either YouTube doesn’t get that, or its owners (Alphabet who owns Google who owns Youtube) figure people’s discomfort due to their extensive choice offerings is worth it for the many billions of dollars in profit it allows.
—
Who Cares:
Supermarket space is a cut-throat business, and the big multinational corporations can afford to have departments that seek to maximise profits.
And they do. And they know their stuff.
Thus all the known techniques like loss-leaders (to entice people in), like layout optimisation (to make people walk past stuff to get to the staples), and even sneakier stuff like music and scents (to relax people). I find it rather amusing that you imagine they don’t know about the issue of choices available to customers, and that individual stores are run by people with discretion as to what items they sell.
(BTW, have you ever noticed things like supermarket chain catalogues? You imagine they are only applicable to one store?)
—
In passing, but related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
Allegedly so, but I always wondered why they devote so much shelf space -- for example almost half an aisle to Coca Cola products -- to some product that are realistically never going to run out because they have plenty of back storage and can easily refill the shelves just as quickly as product is bought, on the other hand other product lines have so little space given to them that they often do empty out (and if I ask a passing staff member to check “out back”, I can often get said product.)
Another example is the huge amount of shelf space (floor to ceiling, 2-4 foot wide each) devoted to Heinz Tomato Ketchup and Hellmann’s Mayonnaise which are never more than a fraction removed, yet they saw fit to stop stocking my favourite wholegrain mustard which previously was given a single 2″ 1-shelf slot and frequently ran out.
If I were cynical I might suggest that their policy had -- must like the music/film industries -- more to do with control than pure economics.
xohjoh2n, I wouldn’t know.
But I do know they like to maximise profit, and that need not be restricted to the shoppers themselves.
Two likely possibilities:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planogram optimisation.
2. placement fees: cf. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/718711109
John @15, read the book. The research data is included in it. It isn’t “read a book, it must be true.” The data are compelling, and the conclusions are based on that.
When you have data that counters that data, you can claim that you are drawing on something beyond your own confirmation bias, or by the reasoning that what you just think for no reason must be true. So, put up your data or shut up on this. The ball’s in your court to produce some argument beyond “Well I just think so and I refuse to look at actual research in the field, so what I think is true.”
What difference does it make if some big companies “don’t know that”? Evading the question by shouting “Look over there” isn’t a valid argument.
You can’t or won’t read because you wrote this: “have you considered you might be the exception rather than the rule?” I didn’t claim I was the rule.
I paid close attention to Roger Ebert’s movie reviews during his career. Nine times out of ten, his likes and dislikes matched mine. After his death, there really isn’t any reviewer I pay attention to because their tastes aren’t the same (putting aside how many give positive reviews for pay). Movie trailers can’t be trusted.
Piracy in the 2000s solved that problem. I don’t watch movies anymore, but when I did, I would download and watch 10-20 minutes to see if a movie was worth paying for. Knowing what you’re going to get makes choice a lot easier. Free preview chapters of books are available and you can make your own decision about those, but movie studios don’t want you to have that option because oft times they’re selling a pig in a poke. Visiting a friend, I’ve seen that netflix actually does this, lets you see a few minutes of footage, not just highlights.
garnetstar:
Already told you: I’m personally not fazed by choice. Doesn’t stress me out.
So that’s my data.
(In fact, when I go to a library, say, I want there to be lots and lots of choice!)
That was sarcasm.
“… the big multinational corporations can afford to have departments that seek to maximise profits.
And they do. And they know their stuff.”
But, according to that book you keep adducing, you must be — because everyone is supposedly bothered by “too much” choice, right? Just like everyone needs to breathe.
John, you seem to be hung up on a simple misconception. Garnetstar’s recollection of the thrust of the book was “too many choices causes discomfort and dissatisfaction”, and you have taken this to mean “…in all people”. But that last is only your inference.
Holms, ahem: “garnetstar, not everyone is bothered by a large number of options.”
(My very first response, to which garnetstar took umbrage, @6.
The response is at #7: “All people are “bothered” at some point by a large number of options.”)
So it’s garnetstar’s assertion, explicitly. No need to infer.
“I’m personally not fazed by choice. Doesn’t stress me out.
So that’s my data.”
Anecdotes are not data. Personal experiences are not data. I said data, put up or shut up. Arguments from “That’s how I feel” are used by QAnon, and are rightly dismissed as worthless. Arguments from emotional need to insist that one’s ideas are right because they’re yours are equally worthless. “I think it, so it is” is solipsism, and worthless.
Until you read the research done in this area, you don’t know the number of choices that were found to be “too many”, the number at which “everyone” will become “bothered” by too much choice. So you have no idea if you’ve ever been confronted by that number of choices or not, and therefore you have no basis for saying that *you* don’t personally experience this. You’ve never experienced torture either, so you’re not bothered by it, right? Or, you’ve been in solitary confinement for ten minutes or so and it doesn’t bother you, so it must not bother anyone who has to live under it, right? Arguments from ignorance are also worthless.
As for your weak, unlikley exucse about “sarcasm”, along with learning to think and read, perhaps you’d better work on learning to write too.
garnetstar:
Of course they are.
Look, if you spruiked a book that said all people have only one arm, and I tell you I have two arms, I have falsified the claim if I actually have two arms. So, not all people have one arm.
Your very claim is about how people feel; how is it not based on reports about how people feel?
Well, you claimed to have read it. So, what’s the number?
Depends on whether arguing with a blockhead constitutes torture 😉
Also, and quite clearly, someone who has never experienced torture cannot be bothered by having experienced torture.
Now you’ve confused yourself; I’m not claiming nobody is bothered by having many possible choices, I’m claiming that it’s not everybody. Which was the very first thing I wrote.
And yet you persist.
Yes, quite evidently I can neither read nor write.
(heh)
[meta]
Ah well, I recognise that I am clearly indulging in my predilection for pointless argument.
So I’ll stop. Especially over such a triviality.
But first, here’s the gist:
garnetstar, you recollected a book which, in you adumbrated as: “the thesis of which, I believe, was that too many choices causes discomfort and dissatisfaction”.
So I responded “not everyone is bothered by a large number of options.
Simple, really.
But then, the retort “All people are “bothered” at some point by a large number of options.”
So this little aside ensued.
Thing is, even not having read the book, I’m pretty sure the author(s) wouldn’t make such an universal claim.
Which is irrelevant anyway, since I know I don’t fit the pattern you claim the book claims.
So I know I’m not wrong, but that doesn’t entail that the book is wrong.