The Paradox of Choice

Psychologist Barry Schwartz argued that having more options can sometimes make us less satisfied, not more — a phenomenon often called choice overload. The evidence here is mixed and context-dependent: a large meta-analysis of around 50 experiments found the average effect close to zero, and the famous "jam study" did not reliably replicate. Choice overload seems to appear mainly under specific conditions, such as high difficulty or uncertainty about what you want — not as an automatic law of decision-making.

Still, the soulmate myth can create exactly those conditions. When you treat one perfect match as the only acceptable outcome, almost any real partner can look like a near-miss, and ordinary friction starts to read as a sign you picked wrong. The belief in one perfect match can turn normal friction into evidence of a cosmic mistake. Growth-oriented people, by contrast, expect friction and treat it as material for a stronger relationship.