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 More Quotes by Sheena Iyengar More Quotes From Sheena Iyengar I didn't really give them anymore than one choice, soda or no soda. They didn't... whereas we put a lot of stock in the differences between soda. Sheena Iyengar differences choices giving I mean we might even go to war as to whether we love Coke or Pepsi and our whole identity is wrapped up in that choice. You know, for the Russians they felt that these minor differences between these various sodas was just hyped up and irrelevant. Sheena Iyengar differences war mean You know give me choices that are truly different from one another, otherwise they don't regard them as meaningful choices. Sheena Iyengar choices meaningful giving There is a different attitude about, you know, how much differentiation there needs to be between our options and how many choices do I need to have in order to make a choice. Sheena Iyengar choices attitude order About the only time our gut can truly outperform our reason is if we truly have developed a kind of informed intuition. So that means the chess master or someone who has really thought about it and given themselves feedback on a particular activity for at least 10,000 hours or more. Sheena Iyengar intuition chess mean About the only question that we would say and this is a big one in our lives that we would say you don't just use pure reason to decide the answer to is anything that affects your happiness, because then gut and reason answer very different questions. So gut tells you "How do I feel about this right now?" Sheena Iyengar different use answers You know if they said kindness or funniness was really most important to them then they will be more likely to say yes to the person that they thought was kind and funny. Sheena Iyengar important kindness said I've done a number of studies with speed dating and Match.com and what's interesting is that you know we still walk into a speed dating event, you know, thinking about what it is we're looking for in a mate and so you ask people, like women will say "I'm looking for somebody who is really kind and sincere and smart and funny." Sheena Iyengar smart numbers thinking And guys will say looks matter, but they'll also say things like "Well, she should be smart and kind." And you know those are... so the typical responses and if you give them just a few options, like five or six, then they will rate them on the very characteristics that they said were really important to them. Sheena Iyengar smart guy giving So for decisions about happiness you essentially need at least both and probably even more than that, you probably also need to do analysis that doesn't involve yourself to get at the answer of what will make you happy in 10 years. Sheena Iyengar decision years needs I mean it wasn't that they sat around thinking oh gosh I needed more choices in my grocery stores the way I had come to think about it as an American growing up. Sheena Iyengar growing-up mean thinking When Japanese went to Hawaii they would go straight and buy the same thing that they would buy in Japan. They just got it cheaper, which they liked. And so they would still eat the red bean ice cream or the green tea ice cream, but they didn't really take advantage of the variety and it wasn't clear that they cared. Sheena Iyengar ice-cream japan tea We either put out 6 different flavors of jam or 24 different flavors of jam and we looked at 2 things. First, in what case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam? Sheena Iyengar different jam people Now to what...? How we teach people to make choices and the things they're going to make choices over - that is culturally learned. Sheena Iyengar teach choices people Well certainly not having any choice - having your entire life dictated by others. Sheena Iyengar wells choices You know, like, none of us would choose - no matter where we are in the world - would choose to you know become a member of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" world, but how much choice is really the question. Sheena Iyengar nineteen choices world I mean we know that some choice makes you better off than no choice. Now do we get better off if we go from a lot of choice versus a few choices? And there I think the answer is much, much, much more complicated. Sheena Iyengar choices mean thinking If you truly have expertise - and expertise can be say a chess master who has really mastered something or an artist or a musician of some sort you know if you give a jazz musician. Sheena Iyengar musician artist giving Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant. Sheena Iyengar track musician choices A chess master can keep track of more choices than the number of stars in the galaxy within an instant, but these are people that have truly learned and mastered the choices that they have and how to deal with those choices over a very, very long period of training, so essentially what they're really doing is ruling out all the irrelevant choices and only zeroing in on the most relevant, useful choices at the moment. Sheena Iyengar stars numbers long
