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The Mao suit plan might sound like a blatant affront to our freedom-of-choice culture, but according to investigators at Cornell University, many of the modern options we’re offered are in fact no more meaningful than swapping the buttons on a tunic. The Cornell psychologists report that free choice is useful when deciding between things that are wildly different, but it just doesn’t work like that in the shopping aisles. When the researchers told a group of volunteers that they were about to receive either chocolate or a bad smell, the volunteers who were given the option to choose between choc and pong were far happier than those who merely got what they were given. But when the choice was between items whose differences were hard to discern, such as two different blends of coffee (as opposed to totally different drinks), the volunteers who were denied choice were just as satisfied with the drink they received as the volunteers who got to choose their own brew. The Cornell researchers conclude that although we can spend ages in stores agonising over different brands, we know subliminally that these options won’t make any great difference. 

Excerpted from pages 152 to 153 of Enough: breaking free from the world of excess by John Naish