The art of choosing

by Sheena Iyengar

Paper Book, 2010

Status

Available

Publication

New York, NY : Twelve, 2010.

Description

Sheena Iyengar's award-winning research reveals how and why we choose: whether or not choice is innate or bound by culture, why we sometimes choose against our best interests, and how much control we really have over what we choose.

User reviews

LibraryThing member detailmuse
"We each develop a personal equation to account for the trajectory of life: x amount of choice, y of chance, z of destiny. […] I believe that choice -- though it can be finicky, unwieldy, and demanding -- is ultimately the most powerful determinant of where we go and how we get there."

The Art of
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Choosing is Sheena Iyengar’s entertaining exploration of those finicky, unwieldy, and demanding aspects of choice. There’s research (expanded upon in extensive sections of endnotes and bibliography), but the “art” of the title refers to how history, culture, philosophy, psychology, and economics affect our big and small choices. For example: Are you part of an I (individualist) or We (collectivist) society? Do your politics tend toward capitalist (freedom from restriction of initiative) or socialist (freedom to enjoy equal opportunity)? Is your perception of having a choice more psychologically satisfying than your actually making the choice? Can you resist both conformity and uniqueness to choose according to your authentic self? What happens when marketers introduce faux choice through product extension or governments add sin taxes?

With blurbs by Gladwell and Gawande, I was primed to enjoy this book, and I did. It’s interesting and readable, although little seems new. And though there are seven chapters, I found it difficult to define a cohesive topic for many, or an arc that develops and concludes over the chapter; I felt more adrift at sea (albeit pleasantly) than in a stream’s current. Still, I’m glad for several takeaways -- especially a reminder about how quickly we weary when choosing and Iyengar’s counter-intuitive suggestion to make the easy choices first (e.g. with a product, what features we most want) so as to winnow out, early on, later irrelevant options.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)
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LibraryThing member rivkat
The author was the primary researcher on the semi-famous jam study, the one that showed that people liked having six choices more than they liked having twenty-five when sampling jam, which has various implications for marketers and others interested in influencing behavior. Other than that, I
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can’t say there’s much to recommend this book if you’ve already read some behavioral economics (and I have read rather a lot in the field, so much in fact that I didn’t encounter a single new result in this book, though as I thought about it I’m not sure I’ve seen them all in the same place; you might have to put together Gladwell and Sunstein & Thaler and a couple of others to get there). The most provocative part of the book comes early and its implications are not, sadly, returned to—Iyengar’s result that people adhering to strict religious constraints are on average happier than those who aren’t, despite the fact that this seems to require them to surrender choice, which modern American ideology puts at the center of the well-lived life. In the conclusion, Iyengar points out that the idea of choice can be used to justify unjust systems (she chose to stay home with the kids and thus deserves very little money, etc.); I’d have preferred to read the other book that might have been written with those endpoints, about choice and happiness and the value and meaning of both.
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LibraryThing member goodinthestacks
All I will say is that you should choose to read this book!
LibraryThing member GShuk
Do we really have control just because we have a choice? Is choice always good? This book explores these questions and takes many variables like culture, politics, environment, amount of choices etc. have on how one chooses and if choice is the best option. She also made it personal by including
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her story which is very interesting on its own. Great book on choosing.
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LibraryThing member WinonaBaines
Started but didn't finish - just wasn't the right time to read it.
LibraryThing member sundaraz
The book is really interesting. I learned a lot about choices and biases, and was quite surprised about the results of some studies. The downside was the feeling that i was readiing a series of articles than a coherent narrative by the author. May be i should read it once more to find that. Also
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the author was more interested in presenting the dilemmas and how people behaved in those situations rather than giving us some direction for better choices. May be it was author's intention to just present these and leave the conclusions or lessons to the reader. Overall, a good book worth reading.
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LibraryThing member Periodista
Purports to be something like Gladwell or Freakanomics--applied social science-- but it's very well padded and full of generalizations (about *all* Americans, for example, when maybe the view of new immigrants or second generation or certain ethnic sub-groups would make more sense.) There are lots
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of problems with jumping to conclusions from survey responses, even more assuming that respondents in different cultures and countries attach the same meanings to questions.You really have to do interviews and probe people to figure out what they feel and how strongly.

Have you ever noticed that when anyone repeatedly makes comparisons with Sweden, they never mention (don't know? )that the population is less than 10 million? There are more illegal immigrants in the US than that. Wouldn't it make more sense to compare Sweden to Minnesota or the New York metro area, which has a similar population. Except 40 percent of NYC were born outside the US..

For those looking personal insight a little short of self-help, Stumbling Toward Happiness is far superior. The consumer psychology and marketing bits--like how people are more likely to buy something if there aren't too many choices--is interesting and potentially useful. But you have to wade through a lot of matter and unsupported generalizations to reach it. Maybe start with the bibliography.
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LibraryThing member buildingabookshelf
This book, about how we choose, is a good combination of science and interesting stories. Anyone who likes science will probably think this is not really detailed enough, but for the rest of us, it give a really good understanding of the science behind what our brain does when we are faced with a
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decision.
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LibraryThing member kushal.gupta
It is more heavy on insight side about choices, their effects, but when it comes to wisely choose our steps or to offer advice, it chooses not to dwell on that path.
LibraryThing member rmagahiz
I got about a quarter of the way through this, but the thing I didn't like was how some of the sections seemed a bit padded out - I wanted the author to get through some of the elementary points more quickly to get on to the interesting stuff. Maybe I'll pick this up again at some future date.
LibraryThing member danoomistmatiste
Lot of useful insights and observations in this well written book. Some of them worth quoting. A few years after the fall of the Berlin wall, folks of the erstwhile East Germany were asked if life was better and surprisingly a lot of them pined for the good old days and wanted a return of the
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communist era, the reason, more choices but no money to avail of them. The constant refrain was, under communism we had more money but did not have a lot of goods to spend it on, whereas now we have all the goods that one can want but no money to buy them.

About scientific management as envisioned by F.W.Taylor. If a man feels that he is worth more and wants to be paid a significantly higher (60%) hourly wage, what should he do and here I quote "Well, if you are a high-priced man, you will do exactly as this man tells you tomorrow, from morning till night. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk, you pick it up and you walk, and when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. You do that right straight through the day. Adn what's more, not back talk..... Now you come on to work here tomorrow morning and I'll know before night whether you are really a high-priced man or not".
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LibraryThing member Tytania
I don't know, I just didn't really learn anything. The most exciting part was when she starts talking about the famous jam study, and how everybody seems to know about it but everybody gets it slightly wrong; and then she reveals that she should know because she's the one who actually conducted the
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jam study. Mind blown!

[The jam study offered people a taste test of 24 different jams, then repeated the experiment with only 6 jams, and found that 24 jams attracted more attention but 6 jams resulted in more sales.]
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