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If I have one I have none, if I have two I have one and if I have three I have many. What am I?
The answer is choice. Choice is an interesting concept because it is one that I believe we all crave but at the same time don’t always need.
Let’s take the trip to the supermarket to buy, for example, coffee. When making a purchasing decision, we find it important that there are many choices of brand/product available to us. If we went to the coffee aisle and found only 1 coffee brand/product we would likely be dissatisfied with the lack of choice. An interesting experiment would be to test if we would be happy with buying the only coffee brand/product available even if happened to be the one we would have selected if we had multiple choices available. My gut feel is that we wouldn’t just because we didn’t have the choice available to us in the fist place. We would have felt forced into buying the only brand/product available and that would leave us with a bad experience before even tasting the coffee!
Why is choice so important to us and, conversely, why is a lack of choice seen as a negative? Surely if the best brand/product of coffee was the only one available then we shouldn’t have anything to complain about even though there was no choice available?
“The problem is choice” is a quote from Neo when talking to the Architect in the move the Matrix 2. In the Matrix movies life has become a computer simulation with humans plugged into the ‘matrix’, which allows machines to harvest body energy to power themselves. In order to do this without any humans figuring out that they are actually in a computer simulation, the machines have to be able to perfectly model human behaviour to create a realistic world. Where the machines struggle is that every so often an anomaly happens where a specific human, known as ‘the one’, enters the simulation and makes choices that the machines cannot model and hence is able to defeat the matrix. Thus making unpredictable choices saves humanity from being slaves to the machines!
Choice seems to be something that we as humans see as a necessity in order to feel like we are in control. We make a choice and this makes us feel that what happens as an outcome is a result of the choice we made. Choice gives us freedom and a lack of choice somehow infringes on our freedom because we had no say in the outcome.
Another great example of this comes from when someone puts a restriction in place. Take the parent that tells their child not to do something and then is outraged when their child does the opposite of what they said. Why do children do the opposite of what their parents say? Part of the reason is that they feel like you have taken away their right to make a choice for themselves. Thus there is evidence to suggest that the need for us to be able to make choices is instinctual and part of our biology.
So as humans the need to make choices is important to us and when we don’t feel like we have a choice then we see this as a negative and potentially a loss of freedom and/or control over our lives.
Let’s say there is a quick way to do something and a slow way to do the same thing. Given the choice between the two we would choose the quick way since it saves time. If we were told to do the quick way because we cannot do the slow way then we would be uneasy with the situation even if we would have chosen the quick way if we had the choice. We may believe that there is some underlying reason why we weren’t able to choose the slow way and maybe the slow way was better in some way. Not having the freedom to choose may make us believe that there could be something nefarious going on or that someone is trying to force us to do something that we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves.
This brings me to the current situation with vaccine hesitancy and one of the reasons why we see many people not getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Whilst there are many conspiracy theories about the vaccines that are quoted as the reason for not taking the vaccines available, I think there is also another important element causing the hesitancy and that is to do with choice. The pressure to get vaccinated by the Government and socially can be perceived as a lack of choice. People feel that they are being forced into taking the vaccines and, even though this might be the best thing to do, the lack of choice becomes a barrier.
Sometimes the right thing to do is what is asked of us without the need to have a choice but how do we convince people to accept that sometimes not having a choice is ok? I fear Neo’s statement holds true in many circumstances. The problem is choice!
