Have you ever stepped foot in a grocery store and been immediately overwhelmed by all the choices you have about everything from chips to sodas? The paradox of choice is that we often believe having multiple options makes it easier to find the product we really want, but it turns out that having a lot of options makes it harder to figure out exactly which one we want and often leaves us unhappy with our choice.
Grey’s Anatomy — Jackson’s Inheritance
Jackson’s grandfather dies and leaves him a very large inheritance, $250 million to be exact. Jackson feels like this is a burden for personal reasons, but Maggie chimes in that it is a burden because it’s hard to know how to spend that much money. She goes through all the things he could do with it and how having that many options can be tiring. This is a classic example of the overchoice problem where consumers can become overwhelmed with options. There is small note in Maggie’s speech where she says that Jackson could buy a vineyard and never work again, which would be reflective of a pure income effect.