Social scientists like Barry Schwartz, Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College are currently studying the effects of information overload on the Web.

Scientists are looking into how the media has heightened the expectations of hair consumers to believe it’s relatively easy to achieve the same high fashion glam hairstyles that all of their celebrity idols are wearing.

As a result of the hairstyling info overload combined with heightened hairstyle expectations, hair consumers are literally exhausted and unhappier than ever with their hair choices.

The sheer volume of information along with the breadth of choices available to consumers, have only served to heighten their expectations to an unreasonable level. As a result of choice overload and unreasonable expectations it’s becoming even more impossible to be delighted any more.

Nowadays, the best consumer hair clients can even hope for is that a minimum level of expectations be reached.

Choice overload can make consumers question the decisions they make before they even make them and it can make consumers blame themselves for any and all failures

Even worse, the amount of rampant hair care and hairstyling misinformation makes it even questionable if hair consumers can even meet minimal hairstyling expectations.  This is because the amount of wrong hair care and hairstyling information exceeds the amount of correct information.

This glut of wrong information presented on the Net with the sole goal of attracting advertising dollars leaves hair consumers confused and filled with conflicting hair care and product recommendations.  Sometimes this bad information guides hair consumers to make the wrong decisions with regards to their hair care.

The hardest thing for a hair consumer is to correctly identify good information from bad because the average hair consumer is not an expert. Sadly the many thousands of web sites that pop up may know even less than the consumers visiting them.

How can this situation be fixed?

Hair consumers should exercise extreme caution when visiting hair and beauty sites that are not run by either licensed professionals or certified hair care experts who can guide them appropriately.

Also, consumers need to understand that the majority of celebrities have an entire team of hair and beauty experts making them look gorgeous on a constant basis.  The hair and beauty experts often spend many hours crafting new hairstyles and creating sophisticated make-up.

Does this mean that consumers can’t look as gorgeous as their celebrity idols?  No.  It just means that expectations should be set appropriately and when consumers do achieve their ideal hairstyles, they should strive to feel good, yes, even delighted.

We should also beware of putting ourselves into the situation of having too deal with information overload or unlimited options.  Too much choice can ultimately lead to burnout or even depression.

For more information on Information Overload, Misinformation and related topics refer to:
Information overload

Tags: Hair Care Information On The Web, Hair Consumer Exhaustion, Hairstyle Happiness Ruined By High Expectations

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Hair, Hair Rants & Raves, Hairstyles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.