Maximizers and satisficers

I've been talking about maximizers and satisficers ever since I heard Barry Schwartz talking about his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less on NPR many weeks ago. Despite the fact that I've been talking about it for weeks, I never bothered to Google "maximizers satisficers" until now. I just found a short but good description of the book on Monster.com by Thad Peterson. Here are some paragraphs from the article:

In his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Schwartz describes two personality types: satisficers and maximizers. Satisficers can make choices without too much agonizing and without being plagued by regret after the fact. Maximizers, though, are obsessed with making the perfect decision. As a result, they're tortured by the abundance of choices. And once they do choose, they feel they failed to make the best choice. These people "are borderline clinically depressed, so it's not just sort of a mild dissatisfaction," says Schwartz. "It really does seem to be close to pathological."

Given the overwhelming number of professional pursuits available, these feelings can become even more pronounced when choosing a career path or a job. When Schwartz and his colleagues studied 600 graduating college students conducting job searches, they found that "maximizers get better jobs, more interviews, higher starting salaries, and they feel, by every measure we could come up with, worse than satisficers."

Goddammit! I'm totally a maximizer. I'm a little skeptical about this whole borderline clinically depressed theory, though. Even though I might not always be satisfied with my purchases/decisions, I doubt that any psychiatrist would diagnose me as close to being clinically depressed.