Mark Lepper

One particularly fascinating part of this concerns the number of choices people receive.

In a famous series of experiments, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper investigated whether giving people more choice was always beneficial.

In one field experiment, shoppers encountered displays containing either 6 or 24 varieties of jam.

The larger display attracted more attention, but people who encountered the smaller selection were considerably more likely to actually buy something.

One of the most famous examples demonstrating this is the Stanford Jam Experiment.

Psychologist Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a jam display at a luxury grocery store in California on two different days.

One of the days, there were six jams.

The other day, there were 24.