Choices

Inspiring teens to make positive choices about school.

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Consolidation is also rife in the tech sector. If Mozilla disappeared tomorrow, Google would have near monopoly control of how all of us experience web content on Windows and Android, a massive combined market share. The answer to social media's woes isn't regulation but openness. Will Microsoft's decision make it harder for Mozilla's own browser Firefox to prosper? Making Google more powerful is risky on many fronts, including to our potential revenue.

Google determines so much of consumer content experience, as well as the business model for many businesses online, from publishers to browsers like Mozilla Firefox to retailers seeking customers generally. And in the odd way of technology, part of the answer depends on what the web developers who code services and websites do.

If one technology has enough market share, then it becomes easier for web developers to decide not to worry if their services and sites work with anything else.

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That's exactly what it was like in the early s, before Firefox, when Microsoft had a near-monopoly status with its Internet Explorer browser. The consumer experience began to deteriorate. Within a few years, consumers were trapped in an abusive, insecure and malware-laden system. Mozilla became an independent, non-profit, c 3 organization to build a competitive browser as a public-benefit open source project. My role as Mozilla's co-founder, leader and, later, CEO and chair, has always been to ensure Mozilla focused on creating an internet experience that was better for consumers.

It took Firefox, an alternative produced by a mission-driven organization, to give consumers a better option.

As increasing options are available, three problems emerge. First, there is the issue of gaining adequate information about the choices in order to make a decision.

Second, having more choices leads to an escalation of expectation. If there is one choice available, and it ends up being disappointing, the world can be held accountable. When there are many options and the choice that one makes is disappointing, the individual is responsible.

However, a recent meta-analysis of the literature on choice overload calls such studies into question Scheibehenne, Greigeneder, and Todd, In many cases, researchers have found no effect of choice set size on people's beliefs, feelings, and behavior. Indeed, overall, the effect of "too many options" is minimal at best. While it might be expected that it is preferable to keep one's options open, research has shown that having the opportunity to revise one's decisions leaves people less satisfied with the decision outcome.

The results suggest that reversible decisions cause people to continue to think about the still relevant choice options, which might increase dissatisfaction with the decision and regret. Individual personality plays a significant role in how individuals deal with large choice set sizes.

Psychologists have developed a personality test that determines where an individual lies on the satisficer-maximizer spectrum. A maximizer is one who always seeks the very best option from a choice set, and may anguish after the choice is made as to whether it was indeed the best. Satisficers may set high standards but are content with a good choice, and place less priority on making the best choice. Due to this different approach to decision-making, maximizers are more likely to avoid making a choice when the choice set size is large, probably to avoid the anguish associated with not knowing whether their choice was optimal.

It found that maximizers reported a stronger preference for retaining the ability to revise choices. Additionally, after making a choice to buy a poster, satisficers offered higher ratings of their chosen poster and lower ratings of the rejected alternatives.

Pixelberry Studios

Maximizers, however, were less likely to change their impressions of the posters after making their choice which left them less satisfied with their decision. Maximizers are less happy in life, perhaps due to their obsession with making optimal choices in a society where people are frequently confronted with choice. In regards to buying products, maximizers were less satisfied with consumer decisions and were more regretful. They were also more likely to engage in social comparison, where they analyze their relative social standing among their peers, and to be more affected by social comparisons in which others appeared to be in higher standing than them.

For example, maximizers who saw their peer solve puzzles faster than themselves expressed greater doubt about their own abilities and showed a larger increase in negative mood. Choice architecture is the process of encouraging people to make good choices through grouping and ordering the decisions in a way that maximizes successful choices and minimizes the number of people who become so overwhelmed by complexity that they abandon the attempt to choose. Generally, success is improved by presenting the smaller or simpler choices first, and by choosing and promoting sensible default options.

Certain choices, as personal preferences, can be central to expressing one's concept of self-identity or values. In general, the more utilitarian an item, the less the choice says about a person's self-concept. Purely functional items, such as a fire extinguisher , may be chosen solely for function alone, but non-functional items, such as music, clothing fashions, or home decorations, may instead be chosen to express a person's concept of self-identity or associated values. Sophia Rosenfeld analyses critical reactions to choice in her review [25] of some of the work of Iyengar , [26] Ben-Porath, [27] Greenfield , [28] and Salecl.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Choice disambiguation. This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. Learn how and when to remove these template messages. This article has an unclear citation style.

Why your internet choices just got narrower

The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation and footnoting. January Learn how and when to remove this template message. This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. April Learn how and when to remove this template message.

Students get it. Communities want it.

The examples and perspective in this article may not include all significant viewpoints. Please improve the article or discuss the issue. This article contains weasel words: Such statements should be clarified or removed.

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