#essay: Are you a Love Maximizer or Dating a Love Maximizer? Meaning? Are you always looking around for something better: a better job, a better apartment… a better relationship? For example, let’s say you finally found a pretty great love catch. Do you still find yourself tempted to keep going back to that large online dating ocean, in hopes of finding an even bigger, better, more 100% perfect catch? If so, your search for the better might be making your life worse. And that’s not just my opinion — that’s the opinion of Barry Schwartz, Ph.D., psychology professor at Swarthmore College, and author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. After extensive research, Schwartz has concluded that excess proliferation of choice makes people more anxious and less happy — even clinically depressed at times. Schwartz defines people who tend to check out all the options as “maximizers” and believes they tend to question whether they’ve made the right choice, then later regret their choices. Unfortunately, in today’s online world, it’s very easy to become a “love maximizer” with its tempting smorgasbord of dating choices. With so much choice, it’s so easy to fall into exploring an “upgrade” — even when your sweetie is total sweetie! Or you can wind up with “choice paralysis” and not be able to get into a relationship at all. How does this happen? Schwartz cites a study with shoppers. Group #1 was offered free samples of six different jams. Group #2 was offered free samples of 24 jams. Afterwards, Group #1 was more likely to buy a jam than Group #2. This result doesn’t seem logical. You’d guess that people would be more likely to find a jam when given a range four times as large. But the overabundance of choice seemed to freeze shoppers’ decision-making skills. Unfortunately, this same “brain freeze” can happen to daters when shopping for partners in that endless online parade of possibilities. “It’s a satisfaction treadmill,” says Schwartz. “The more options we have available, the more we think that another option out there is perfect.” CLICK TO READ MORE & GET 4 TOOLS TO FIND LOVE HAPPINESS IN A WORLD WITH TOO MUCH CHOICE...
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 01:45:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015