The Art of Choosing Book Summary - The Art of Choosing Book explained in key points

The Art of Choosing summary

Name: The Art of Choosing
Rating: 4.1 (27 reviews)
Author: Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar

Tips for making better decisions.

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4.1 (27 ratings)

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What is The Art of Choosing about?

The Art of Choosing draws on the results of fascinating psychological experiments in order to offer you insight into how we make decisions. In this book, you’ll discover the common pitfalls that prevent us from making the right choices, and you’ll receive practical tips for making better decisions in the future.

About the Author

Sheena Iyengar is S. T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Her extensive research on how and why we choose has been cited by popular magazines such as Time and Fortune, and she was voted among the top 50 Most Influential Business Thinkers by Forbes in 2011.

Table of Contents

Key idea 1 of 11

Our choices are determined by two opposing systems: the automatic and the reflective.

How exactly do we make decisions? Most of us would like to think that we weigh alternatives and arrive at rational, well-thought-out conclusions. However, the reality is far more complicated.

To study choice, researchers had children sit at a table with a tasty marshmallow positioned in front of them. They told the kids: “You can have one marshmallow right now. But if you wait until I come back, you can have two.”

For the kids who decided to eat the marshmallow immediately, their automatic system, which subconsciously and continuously analyzes sensory data to produce automatic reactions, was predominant.

When these kids smelled the marshmallow – i.e., experienced sensory stimulus – they responded with an automatic reaction, grabbing the marshmallow and greedily eating it.

Choices dictated by the automatic system happen so fast that people find themselves acting even before they have an opportunity to consciously consider them. While it won’t help you abstain from eating marshmallows, we should thank the automatic system for enabling us to make quick decisions in the face of danger, e.g., jumping away from a moving car.

Some kids in the experiment, however, elected not to eat the marshmallow immediately. For them, the reflective system, driven by reason and logic, was predominant.

The reflective system allows us to consider the future consequences of our choices and factor them into our decision making.

In the marshmallow experiment, 30 percent of the children chose to resist the marshmallow temptation for an entire 15 minutes, at which point they were rewarded with the second marshmallow.

Interestingly, when the researchers did follow-up studies on these kids as adults, they discovered that those who had chosen to wait for their second marshmallow as children developed stronger friendships and were healthier and more successful, both academically and financially.

So, while the reflective system is linked to greater longterm success, we still need both systems to make the right choice at the right time.

We often use rules of thumb to help us make decisions, but these can be faulty.

If you’re like most people, then you’ve probably considered casually inviting your ex out while you’re having a lonely night at the bar. But how do you decide if it’s the right choice or not?

Again, rather than laying out all possible pros and cons, we instead rely on heuristics, or “rules of thumb,” to make decisions. These short rules are important because they help save us time and energy, and simplify the decision-making process by making certain options off-limits.

We want to make unique choices – as long as they aren’t too unique.

Why is it that you sometimes want to change your order at a restaurant after discovering that someone at your table chose the same thing? The sad truth is that we want our choices to be unique so that we can feel special.

In fact, for many people, being unique is extremely important – even when our uniqueness is completely arbitrary.

Our culture has great influence over our choices.

Strangely, we aren’t the sole actors when it comes to decision making. In fact, our choices are also heavily influenced by our cultural heritage. This is seen most easily when examining the very different preferences of people from Western and Eastern cultures.

Unsurprisingly, people from more individualistic cultures prefer to be in charge of decision making, while collectivistic cultures want others to make their choices for them.

We miss most of the things that go on around us, yet are still subconsciously influenced by them.

Do you ever become so engrossed in what you are doing that you completely forget the world around you? This selective attention effect is especially noticeable when you’re working on a task that involves concentration.

We can see it in action in an experiment called “The Invisible Gorilla.”

Having choices – or even the illusion of choice – makes us healthier.

Imagine a life in which you have no choices at all, where every activity, every meal, every thing is determined for you. Sounds pretty miserable, right? Rightly so! Indeed, having choice can have great effects on our general well-being.

For example, in the famous Whitehall studies, Michael Marmot followed more than 10,000 British civil servants for a decade starting in 1967 in order to learn more about how work affects our happiness.

We often rely on our gut feelings, but they’re actually bad for decision making.

When we’re faced with a tough decision, many of us consult our feelings in the hope that our intuition will guide us to wisdom. However, our feelings aren’t as reliable as we might assume.

In part, this is due to the fact that our feelings are influenced by our environment.

When making choices we often change our mind – without even noticing it.

Have you ever been called out by a friend for “flip-flopping”? Many of us change our stance on issues in order to back up the choices we’ve made that conflict with those stances.

Say, for example, that you’re concerned about your health and therefore only purchase organic foods and won’t take painkillers. However, you’re also a very social person who enjoys having a drink (or two, or three) at the bar with friends.

Our attention span is limited, so limited options help us make decisions.

You’re standing in the supermarket cereal aisle, totally overwhelmed: How do you choose the one cereal from the 45 other possible choices? Many people experience similar situations in which they become paralyzed by the sheer number of available options.

As it turns out, we aren’t really designed to handle that many options. In fact, most of us can’t handle more than seven.

Placing smart limits on your choices can make you a better decision maker.

As you learned in the previous blink, we can easily become bogged down by an abundance of choice. Luckily, there are steps we can take to prevent ourselves from becoming overwhelmed.

First, being clear about your preferences places healthy limits on your choices, thus making decisions easier.

We often feel better when others make choices for us, but only if we are properly informed.

Do you remember the anxiety you felt the last time you had to make a very difficult decision? Did you wish that someone else could choose for you? You might have been happier if that had happened. In fact, sometimes we are happier when we put decisions in other people’s hands.

When we face difficult choices, we run the risk of regretting them. Take this heartbreaking series of interviews conducted with American and French parents who had lost an infant.

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Who should read The Art of Choosing

Anyone who has ever become overwhelmed by the options on the supermarket shelf
Anyone who wants to make better choices in life
Anyone who sometimes feels mysteriously compelled to buy a product

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The Art of Choosing summary

Listen to the first key idea

What is The Art of Choosing about?

About the Author

Our choices are determined by two opposing systems: the automatic and the reflective.

We often use rules of thumb to help us make decisions, but these can be faulty.

We want to make unique choices – as long as they aren’t too unique.

Our culture has great influence over our choices.

We miss most of the things that go on around us, yet are still subconsciously influenced by them.

Having choices – or even the illusion of choice – makes us healthier.

We often rely on our gut feelings, but they’re actually bad for decision making.

When making choices we often change our mind – without even noticing it.

Our attention span is limited, so limited options help us make decisions.

Placing smart limits on your choices can make you a better decision maker.

We often feel better when others make choices for us, but only if we are properly informed.

Key ideas in The Art of Choosing

Our choices are determined by two opposing systems: the automatic and the reflective.

We often use rules of thumb to help us make decisions, but these can be faulty.

We want to make unique choices – as long as they aren’t too unique.

Our culture has great influence over our choices.

We miss most of the things that go on around us, yet are still subconsciously influenced by them.

Having choices – or even the illusion of choice – makes us healthier.

We often rely on our gut feelings, but they’re actually bad for decision making.

When making choices we often change our mind – without even noticing it.

Our attention span is limited, so limited options help us make decisions.

Placing smart limits on your choices can make you a better decision maker.

We often feel better when others make choices for us, but only if we are properly informed.

Who should read The Art of Choosing

Categories with The Art of Choosing

Books like The Art of Choosing

What our members say

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