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I do think that there are cultural differences in the extent to which we value having more and more choice.

Sheena Iyengar

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Sheena Iyengar
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: November 29
Professor
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
City of Toronto
Sheena Sethi
Differences
Choices
Values
Think
Thinking
Extent
Cultural
Choice
Value

More quotes by Sheena Iyengar

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The typical American reports making about 70 [choices] in a typical day.
Sheena Iyengar
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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
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In reality, many choices are between things that are not that much different. The value of choice depends on our ability to perceive differences between the options.
Sheena Iyengar
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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
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We also don't always know what we want. And in those cases it can actually make us worse off because it's actually easier to figure out what you want and to figure out how the options differ if you have about a handful of them than if you have a hundred of them.
Sheena Iyengar
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The key to getting the most from choice is to be choosy about choosing.
Sheena Iyengar
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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
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We are often in society told to make decisions in one of two ways. We're either told Use your gut, just go with how you feel about it and let that guide you, or we're told to use reason - some very deliberative methodical process of pros and cons and really thinking it through.
Sheena Iyengar
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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
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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
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The expansion of choice has become an explosion of choice.
Sheena Iyengar
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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
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Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant.
Sheena Iyengar
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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
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Well certainly not having any choice - having your entire life dictated by others.
Sheena Iyengar
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In America we tell our parents to bring their child home and put him or her in a crib as they get older, children sleep in they own room not in Mom and Dad's room. What are we training them for? It's independence, because that's what being empowered is all about.
Sheena Iyengar
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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
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The quality of health care continues to improve, and people are living longer, but these developments mean that we're likely to eventually find ourselves in a situation in which we're forced to make difficult choices about our parents, other loved ones, or even ourselves that ultimately boil down to calculations of worth and value.
Sheena Iyengar
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Life hands us a lot of hard choices, and other people can help us more than we might realize. We often think we should make important decisions using just our own internal resources. What are the pros and cons? What does my gut tell me? But often we have friends and family who know us in ways we don't know ourselves.
Sheena Iyengar
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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