Research suggests that there can be too much of a good thing, in that too much choice can reduce the satisfaction that consumers have with their chosen option. But increasing the number of options can also satisfy consumers’ diverse tastes and meet their needs for variety. It thus is not clear when more choice is bad or good. In the current research, we draw on motivation theory to propose that the motivations that underlie consumer choice moderate choice overload. Five experiments demonstrate that more choice increases the difficulty of extrinsically-motivated utilitarian choices to decrease satisfaction, but it increases the autonomy from intrinsically-motivated hedonic ones to increase it. These effects occur because consumers perceive variety in large choice sets. We thus not only explain when more choice is bad or good, but we also explore the very act of choosing and what it means to choose.