First-generation children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents' approach to choice. For them, choice was not just a way of defining and asserting their individuality, but a way to create community and harmony by deferring to the choices of people whom they trusted and respected.

Sheena Iyengar

Categorized in : Children Inspiration Motivation

When we speak of choice, what we mean is the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. In order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.

Sheena Iyengar

exercise order mean

Choice is more than picking 'x' over 'y.' It is a responsibility to separate the meaningful and the uplifting from the trivial and the disheartening. It is the only tool we have that enables us to go from who we are today to who we want to be tomorrow.

Sheena Iyengar

uplifting responsibility meaningful

We have the ability to create choice by altering our interpretations of the world.

Sheena Iyengar

interpretation choices world

When I do have choice I try to be very picky about... or shall I say choosey about when I choose. I don't automatically decide that I must be the one to choose or that it's important for me to make every choice in my life.

Sheena Iyengar

important choices trying

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. —Archibald MacLeish

Sheena Iyengar

freedom choices men

Balancing hopes, desires and an appreciating of the possibilities with a clear-eyed assessment of the limitations: that is the art of choosing.

Sheena Iyengar

assessment appreciate art

The key to getting the most from choice is to be choosy about choosing.

Sheena Iyengar

motivation keys inspiration

When I was in Russia I found that I thought I was going to give these people that I was interviewing a whole bunch of choice in terms of what they could drink while we were chatting.

Sheena Iyengar

russia giving people

The typical American reports making about 70 [choices] in a typical day.

Sheena Iyengar

reports typical choices

Choice is the only tool we have that enables us to go from who we are today to who we want to be tomorrow.

Sheena Iyengar

tools choices want

What leads us astray is confusing more choices with more control. Because it is not clear that the more choices you have the more in control you feel. We have more choices than we've ever had before.

Sheena Iyengar

clear confusing choices

About 60% of the people stopped when we had 24 jams on display and then at the times when we had 6 different flavors of jam out on display only 40% of the people actually stopped, so more people were clearly attracted to the larger varieties of options, but then when it came down to buying, so the second thing we looked at is in what case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam. What we found was that of the people who stopped when there were 24 different flavors of jam out on display only 3% of them actually bought a jar of jam whereas of the people who stopped when there were 6 different flavors of jam 30% of them actually bought a jar of jam.

Sheena Iyengar

different jam people

I pick what are my priorities and I limit those priorities to less than five in my life and really in those particular areas put in the energy to try to make good choices.

Sheena Iyengar

priorities choices trying

Choosing is a creative process, one through which we construct our environment, our lives, ourselves.

Sheena Iyengar

environment creative process

In order to 'hold fast' to something, one must allow oneself to be held to something. That commitment may be one of the hardest things to practice in a world of so much choice.

Sheena Iyengar

practice order commitment

People were actually 6 times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they had encountered 6 than if they encountered 24, so what we learned from this study was that while people were more attracted to having more options, that's what sort of got them in the door or got them to think about jam, when it came to choosing time they were actually less likely to make a choice if they had more to choose from than if they had fewer to choose from.

Sheena Iyengar

doors people thinking

[Americans] think that choice, as seen through the American lens, best fulfills an innate and universal desire for choice in all humans. Unfortunately, these beliefs are based on assumptions that don't always hold true in many countries, in many cultures.

Sheena Iyengar

motivation inspiration country

If we ask for more and more material for the construction, i.e. more and more choice, we're likely to end up with a lot of combinations that don't do much for us or are far more complex than they need to be.

Sheena Iyengar

construction choices needs

What's interesting is that the way we go about finding our marriage partners today is quite different from the way it used to be in this culture.

Sheena Iyengar

different culture interesting

We began to look at "Why is that?" And a large part of that has to do with the fact that when people have a lot of options to choose from they don't know how to tell them apart. They don't know how to keep track of them.

Sheena Iyengar

track people looks