We're born with the desire, but we don't really know how to choose. We don't know what our taste is, and we don't know what we are seeing. Sheena Iyengar More Quotes by Sheena Iyengar More Quotes From Sheena Iyengar I do think that there are cultural differences in the extent to which we value having more and more choice. Sheena Iyengar differences choices thinking The first thing we looked at, in what case were people more likely to be attracted to the jar or jam, so in which case are people more likely to stop when they saw the display of jams and what we found was that more people stopped when there were 24 jams. Sheena Iyengar jam jars people One day I went to the manager and I asked him whether his model was working and he said, "Well, haven't you seen how many customers we have in this store?" And yes indeed I had. I mean it was definitely attracting a lot of customers, even attracting tourist buses that would land up at this store and people would go through the store and marvel at all the options, even sometimes take photographs of the various aisles. Sheena Iyengar land mean people So on the one hand in school you're teachers are constantly telling you that you can be whatever it is you want to be as long as you put your mind and heart to it, and yet at the same time I was also getting the clear message of, well, what can you do really? Sheena Iyengar heart teacher school I think I was always informally thinking about choice from when I was a very young child because I was born to Sikh immigrant parents, so I was constantly going back and forth between a Sikh household and an American outside world, so I was going back and forth between a very traditional Sikh home in which you had to follow the Five K's. Sheena Iyengar home children thinking You get to decide how you're going to look and what you're going to be when you grow up and when people learned that my parents actually had an arranged marriage people thought that was the most horrific thing on earth. I mean how could anybody allow their marriage of all things to be prescribed by somebody else? Sheena Iyengar growing-up mean people I went home and they seemed... my parents seemed normal. They didn't seem to feel like somehow they had been victims of some Nazi camp or something. Sheena Iyengar normal parent home So it was constantly going back and forth between these two cultures that kept raising the question, well, how important is personal freedom? And I think that has always been of interest to me. Sheena Iyengar important two thinking Then, the other thing that affected my interest in choices growing up was the fact that I was going blind and that meant that there were lots of questions that constantly kept arising about how much choices I actually could have. Sheena Iyengar growing-up choices facts I mean can you walk to school on your own? Can you study science? Can you study math? Can you go to a normal school? Do you need to go to a special school? What is going to become of you when you grow up? Are you going to have to live on social security and SSI? Sheena Iyengar growing-up mean school Are you going to be able to shave your legs? Are you going to be able to get married? So it was constantly thinking about both choice in terms of possibilities - I mean because choice is the thing that is supposed to enable you to be whatever it is you want to be - and yet, at the same time you have to think about choice in terms of its limitations. Sheena Iyengar choices mean thinking I think that too ended up affecting a lot of the different research questions that I later asked was really was about well to what extent... How do we balance choice as possibility and choice as limitations? Sheena Iyengar balance choices thinking This is at a time when you know most of us drank tap water, so I used to go to this store and examine all the varieties and we used to marvel at all the choices out there, but I found that I rarely bought anything and I kind of thought that was kind of curious. I mean, they had things that the other grocery stores didn't have and yet I never bought anything. Sheena Iyengar choices water mean I was living, growing up in a very traditional household and yet at the same time I was going to school in the United States where I was taught the importance of personal preference, so at home it was all about learning your duties and responsibilities whereas in school it was all about well you get to decide what you want you want to eat. Sheena Iyengar growing-up home school I used to go to this store called Draeger's and you had a little bit of that same feeling because this was a store that offered you so many varieties, things you'd never contemplated before, you know like 250 mustards and vinegars and over 500 different kinds of fruits and vegetables, or over 2 dozen different types of water. Sheena Iyengar vegetables feelings water It's always a thrilling experience to go into a place that offers you a lot of choice. You know it's like it reminds you of when you're a kid and you go to the amusement park and whether it be Disneyworld or Six Flags you know that thrilling moment when you first enter and you know you've got all these possibilities for the day and it's really a... it's a wonderful feeling. Sheena Iyengar choices feelings kids I think of choosing as a... both a fun and an effortful activity and I think of choice as something that in order for you to really get what you want out of it you have to put a lot into it and so I'm only willing to do that for a few different things and for the rest I really just try to either satisfy, come up with a simple rule or let somebody else make the choice. Sheena Iyengar simple fun thinking I don't know if I approach choice any differently than the sighted people do, but what I am very cognizant of is that choice does have limits and because of that I really try to take advantage of the domains in which I do have choice. Sheena Iyengar choices trying people Now if you expand their choice set. Say you give them 20 different speed dates, everything goes out the window. Everybody starts choosing in accordance with looks because that becomes the easiest criteria by which to weed out all the options and decide "So who am I going to say yes to?" Sheena Iyengar weed choices giving I put out a good 10 different types of drinks for them and they just said, "Oh, okay, so it's just one choice." One choice? I gave you Coke, Pepsi, Ginger Ale, Sprite. They saw that as one choice. Now why was that one choice? Because they felt, well, it was just all soda. Sheena Iyengar pepsi different choices
