Each week I try to watch Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s GPS: Global Public Square. Over time, I find that his topics and guests achieve a level of context on complex foreign policy issues rarely found on television. Two guests on a recent program have had me thinking ever since. Their topic was simply…”making choices.”
Kent Greenfield is the author of The Myth of Choice, and Sheena Iyergar is the author of The Art of Choosing. A common theme that emerged in their conversation was that people actually prefer limited choices. While conventional wisdom might be that we all have come to prefer endless choices, Greenfield and Iyergar presented evidence that too many choices can confuse and cause many of us to make no choice at all.
Actual behavior observation revealed that when choices were limited many consumers were much more likely to act. For example, in a supermarket when a few brand choices were arranged and given a separate location, actual purchases increased. When there were too many choices confusion increased to where the ability to act was disrupted.
Insights like this always seem to apply to other situations. For example, I found myself actually relating this one to our local World Affairs Council schedule of events. Email notices promoting endless programs and events stream my way almost every day. As a result I am finding making choices very difficult. In the days when there were fewer choices I must admit each one seemed more compelling.
Also, I am now wondering to what degree this insight about choice applies to communicating U.S. foreign policy. Are there just too many different message choices flowing from too many places in government for any central idea, or objective, to make it through the clutter? Or worse, can communicating more messages, even when they are positive, actually add to clutter and confusion?
Maybe significantly limiting the receiver’s choices of message points would have a better chance of breaking through this clutter. In other words, while constant 24/7 breaking news presenting opposing points of view each day almost insures widespread confusion, should communication from the state department be simply one regularly repeated statement of our objective for each situation. And should that statement be coordinated so all segments of government are consistently making the same one?
I certainly understand that focusing one simple message on each crisis situation will not achieve total world understanding. But would not such a coordinated effort at least limit negative perceptions a little, and in so doing enhance our credibility with some local and other opinion leaders who might then help us spread the word?