The Art of Choosing

Dr. Sheena Iyengar, Professor of Business in the Management Division of the Columbia Business School, and author of The Art of Choosing, has spent her life studying the impact of choice on people’s lives. She questions and diagnoses choice issues within cultures around the world. Her studies have made her a world-renowned expert on the subject.

In July 2010, she spoke to a packed audience at TEDGlobal about her doctoral studies and her findings. Her findings reveal a puzzling question about choosing and how we make the choices we do, whether it’s as menial of a choice like choosing between Pepsi or Coke or a monumental choice of life or death for an ill newborn.

She spearheads the talk with a story about her travels to Japan for her dissertation studies. She goes to a restaurant and orders a green tea with sugar simply because she enjoys her tea sweetened. The waiter replied “One does not put sugar in green tea.” To which she replied, "I'm aware of this custom. But I really like my tea sweet." Again, the waiter states, “One does not put sugar in green tea.” Finally, the manager comes up to her and simply says, “I’m very sorry. We don’t have sugar”. She succumbs to have a cup of coffee instead, to which she was presented two packets of sugar.

Unbeknownst to her, a cultural study on choice had been conducted. The Japanese waiter helped her save face by upholding their cultural standard of the unsweeted green tea. It was an inappropriate request to her waiter but a reasonable one on her part. Americans see choice far different than those from other cultures.

In America, we’ve made certain assumptions on choice. Dr. Iyengar stated three assumptions. Make your own choices. More options yield better choices. Never say no to choice.

The one that really struck me on a personal level was the second. More options yield better choices. Most Americans would blindly agree to this as they find “comfort” in the retailer’s efforts to provide all kinds of all products. After her explanation, I found myself relating to her study.

She stated “Choice no longer offers opportunities, but imposes constraints. It's not a marker of liberation, but of suffocation by meaningless minutiae. In other words, choice can develop into the very opposite of everything it represents in America when it is thrust upon those who are insufficiently prepared for it.”

Today, the choices available to Americans are almost infinite, whether it’s where to eat, where to shop, what to buy, where to invest and so on. As it relates to me, I find it blinding and confusing, especially living in Orlando; tourist capital of the world. Thousands of attractions and restaurants make a spectacle of the area, so much that even with ten years of living here, you still wouldn’t see everything.

Overall, Dr. Sheena Iyengar shed light on a frustration of mine. I feel liberated in her research in that I don’t need to stress over the amount of choices. Simply put, they all render to basic needs and wants. For instance, look at cheeseburgers. The “variety” lies within different brands providing the same product consisting of meat, cheese and bread.