Book DescriptionEvery day we make choices. Coke or Pepsi? Save or spend? Stay or go?
Whether mundane or life-altering, these choices define us and shape our lives. Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Sheena Iyengar's award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound. In our world of shifting political and cultural forces, technological revolution, and interconnected commerce, our decisions have far-reaching consequences. Use THE ART OF CHOOSING as your companion and guide for the many challenges ahead.
Editorial Reviews (amazon.com)
From Publishers Weekly
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Choice, perhaps the highest good in the American socioeconomic lexicon, is a very mixed blessing, according to this fascinating study of decision making and its discontents. Psychologist Iyengar cites evidence that a paucity of choice can damage the mental and physical health of dogs, rats, and British civil servants alike. But, she contends, choice can also mislead and burden us: advertising manipulates us through the illusion of choice; a surfeit of choices can paralyze decision making; and some choices, like the decision to withdraw life support from a loved one, are so terrible that we are happier if we delegate them to others. Iyengar draws on everything from the pensées of Albert Camus to The Matrix, but her focus is on the ingenious experiments that psychologists have concocted to explore the vagaries of choice. (In her own experiment, shoppers presented with an assortment of 24 jams were 1/10th as likely to buy some than those who were shown a mere six.) Iyengar writes in a lucid, catchy style, very much in the Malcolm Gladwell vein of pop psychology–cum–social commentary, but with more rigor. The result is a delightful, astonishing take on the pitfalls of making up one's mind. (Mar.)
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Review
"No one asks better questions, or comes up with more intriguing answers." (Malcolm Gladwell )
"Sheena Iyengar's work on choice and how our minds deal with it has been groundbreaking, repeatedly surprising, and enormously important. She is someone we need to listen to." (Atul Gawande, author of Better and Complications )
"Sheena Iyengar's work on choice and how our minds deal with it has been groundbreaking, repeatedly surprising, and enormously important. She is someone we need to listen to." (Atul Gawande, author of Better and Complications )
Other Similar Books:
THE HIDDEN BRAIN, by Shankar Vedantam
THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO, by Atul Gawande
HOW WE DECIDE, by Jonah Lehrer
Book Title, by Author: THE ART OF CHOOSING, by Sheena Iyengar
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1 comments for this post
This is the problem with theories and hypothesis, the author can spend an entire book harping upon one point and in the process taking away the beauty of the point. This happens with most 'one point agenda' books like those of Taleb and Freidman.
The reader is smart and his time is valuable. "we get it !" and usually in the first chapter itself. So why drag it over 300 pages , why not bring in new theories ?
It would have been a great book, if it had not been a book but a chapter in a book of 50 such theories.