【正文】 lans that offered you two funds, participation rates were around in the mid70s still not as high as we want it to be. In those plans that offered nearly 60 funds, participation rates have now dropped to about the 60th percentile. Now it turns out that even if you do choose to participate when there are more choices present, even then, it has negative consequences. So for those people who did choose to participate, the more choices available, the more likely people were to pletely avoid stocks or equity funds. The more choices available, the more likely they were to put all their money in pure money market accounts. Now neither of these extreme decisions are the kinds of decisions that any of us would remend for people when youamp。m going to describe to you a study I did with Gur Huberman, Emir Kamenica, Wei Jang where we looked at the retirement savings decisions of nearly a million Americans from about 650 plans all in the . And what we looked at was whether the number of fund offerings available in a retirement savings plan, the 401(k) plan, does that affect peopleamp。s good for our waistlines but it turns out that this choice overload problem affects us even in very consequential decisions. We choose not to choose, even when it goes against our best selfinterests. So now for the topic of today: financial savings. Now Iamp。s their jam aisle. They had 348 different kinds of jam. We set up a little tasting booth right near the entrance of the store. We there put out six different flavors of jam or 24 different flavors of jam, and we looked at two things: First, in which case were people more likely to stop, sample some jam? More people stopped when there were 24, about 60 percent, than when there were six, about 40 percent. The next thing we looked at is in which case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam. Now we see the opposite effect. Of the people who stopped when there were 24, only three percent of them actually bought a jar of jam. Of the people who stopped when there were six, well now we saw that 30 percent of them actually bought a jar of jam. Now if you do the math, people were at least six times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they encountered six than if they encountered 24.
　　Now choosing not to buy a jar of jam is probably good for us at least itamp。 And he pointed to the busloads of tourists that would show up everyday, with cameras ready usually. We decided to do a little experiment, and we picked jam for our experiment. Hereamp。Is this model of offering people all this choice really working?amp。s their olive oil aisle. They had over 75 different kinds of olive oil, including those that were in a locked case that came from thousandyearold olive trees.
　　So I one day decided to pay a visit to the manager, and I asked the manager, amp。s. Now this store, it was almost like going to an amusement park. They had 250 different kinds of mustards and vinegars and over 500 different kinds of fruits and vegetables and more t