Satisficing

I thought I posted this two months ago but apparently only saved a draft... Anyway, I wanted to share an interesting article about womens' happiness was sent around my office. Here's an excerpt:

[T]wo sociologists at the University of Virginia published an exhaustive study of marital happiness among women that challenges this assumption. Stay-at-home wives, according to the authors, are more content than their working counterparts. And happiness, they found, has less to do with divisizon of labor than with the level of commitment and "emotional work" men contribute (or are perceived to contribute). But the most interesting data may be that the women who strongly identify as progressive—the 15 percent who agree most with feminist ideals—have a harder time being happy than their peers...

Read the complete article on Slate.com In the previous article, the researchers surmize that too many choices are contributing to progressive women being less happy. Someone brought up related research about increased choice and "satisficing" - the practice of encountering and evaluating items until one is encountered that exceeds the acceptability threshold, then selecting that item. Satisficing is contrasted with maximizing - evaluating all items before making a selection. The research abstract says they found "negative correlations between maximization and happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and positive correlations between maximization and depression, perfectionism, and regret." They also found that maximizers are "less satisfied than nonmaximizers (satisficers) with consumer decisions, and more likely to engage in social comparison..., more adversely affected by upward social comparison..., more sensitive to regret and less satisfied in an ultimatum bargaining game." Reading that I was sure that I must be a maximizer. But when I rated myself on the Maximization Scale (on page 5 of the pdf linked below) I was only a borerline maximizer. Surprising. I guess there are much more extreme people out there. :-) Read Maximizing Versus Satisficing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice (pdf) There is also an interesting article about satisficing in relation to parenting. I am definitely going to need this advice when I become a parent (or even get pregnant)! http://www.parentmap.com/june_05/0605_1.htm