barry schwartz, a professor at swarthmore college, the author of "the paradox of choice" and he joins us from berkeley, california. welcome to "nbr". >> great to be on. >> hudson: you write about choice overload. what is that when it comes to investment choices? >> well, i can't put a precise number on it, but choice overload is when people have too many options to choose from and the way we know that people have too many options is that they end up choosing none. >> hudson: it is particular to money decision or does this happen all the time? >> all the time, trivial things like buying, you know, pair of sneakers or a flavor of jam, important things like trying to decide who to -- you know, what to marry or what job to take, it happens across the board. >> hudson: we see this a lot with 401(k) investors and one choice that people struggle with is deciding how to invest. the 401(k) money. the average number of funds is 18, and the average investor in the plan holds just four. so is 18 funds in a plan too many? >> i think there's good reason to think it is too many, and there's research