The art of choosing -
Fundamental differences in our ideas about choice.
Assumptions.
1. Make your own choices. If a choice affects you, then you should be the one to make it. This is the only way to ensure that your preferences and interests will be most fully accounted for. It is essential for success. In America the primary focus of choice is the individual. People must choose for themselves, sometimes sticking to their guns, regardless of what other people want or recommend. It's called being true to yourself. But do all individuals benefit from taking such an approach to choice? English kid. Self, teacher or parent telling you what task to do. It doesn't matter who does the choosing, if the task was dictated by another, their performance suffered.
English-Asian kid. Self, teacher or parent. Perform better if told what to do by their parent. Can you please tell my mommy I did it just the way she said. The first generation children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents approach to choice, for them, choice was not just a way of defining and asserting their individuality, but a way to Create community and harmony by deferring to the choices of people whom they trusted and respected. If they had a concept of being true to ones self, than that self, most likely, was composed, not of an individual, but of a collective. Success was just as much about pleasing key figures as it was satisfying ones own preferences. Or, you could say that the individuals preferences were shaped by the preferences of specific others. The assumption then that we do best when the individual self chooses only holds when that self is clearly divided from others. When, in contrast, two or more individuals see their choices and their outcomes as intimately connected, then they may amplify one another's success by turning choosing into a collective act. To insist that they choose independently might actually compromise both their performance and their relationships. Yes that is exactly what the American paradigm demands. It leaves little room for interdependence or an acknowledgment of individual fallibility. It requires that everyone treat choice as a private and self defining act. People that have grown up in such a paradigm might find it motivating, but it is a mistake to assume that everyone thrives under the pressure of choosing alone.
2. More options > Better Choices. The more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice. Walmart, with 100,000 different products, amazon with 27 million books and match.com with what is it? 15 million date possiblities now. You will surely find the perfect match. Let's test this assumption by heading to Eastern Europe. Interviewed residents of former communist countries, who had all faced the challenge of transitioning to a more democratic and capitalistic society. One of the most interesting revelations came not from the answer to a question, but from a simple gesture of hospitality. When my the participants arrived for their interview, I offered them a set of drinks: coke, diet coke, sprite, dr pepper, Pepsi, diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, during the very first session, which was ran in Russia, one of the participants made a gesture that really am caught me off guard. Oh but It doesn't matter, it's all just fizzy drinks, that's just one choice. I was struck by this comment, that from then on, i started to offer all the participants the seven fizzy drinks and I asked them, how many choices are these? Again and again, they perceived these seven different fizzy drinks, not as seven choices, but as one choice: soft drink or no soft drink. When I put out juice and water in addition to these seven soft drinks, now they perceived it as only three, juice water and soft drinks. Compare this to the die hard devotion of many westerners, not just to a particular flavour of soft drink, but to a particular brand. You know, research shows repeatedly that we can't actually tell the difference between coke and Pepsi. Of course you and I know, coke I the better choice. For modern American people who are exposed to more options and more ads associated with options than anyone else in the world, choice Is just as much about who they are as it is about what the product is. Combine this with the assumption that more choices are always better, and you have a group of people for whom every little difference matters and so every choice matters. But for Eastern Europeans, the sudden availability of all these consumer products on the market place was a deluge. They were flooded with choice before they could protest that they didn't know how to swim. What words and images do you associate with choice? Guy from Poland, Ah, for me it is fear. There are some dilemmas you see. I am used to no choice. Guy from Kiev, it is too much. We do not need everything that is there. Sociology professor from Warsaw States - The older generation jumped from nothing to choice all around them. They were never given a chance to learn how to react. I do not need 20 kinds of chewing gum, I don't mean to say that I want no choice, but many of these choices are quite artificial. 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. Americans train their whole lives to play spot the difference. They practice this from such an early age that they've come to believe that everyone must be born with this ability. In fact, all humans share a basic need and desire for choice, we don't all see choice in the same places or to the same extent. When someone can't see how one choice is unlike another, or when there are too many choices to compare and contrast, the process of choosing can be confusing and frustrating. Instead of making better choices, we become overwhelmed by choice, sometimes even afraid of it. Choice no longer offers opportunities but imposes constraints. It's not a marker of liberation, but of suffocation by meaningless minutiae. In other words, choice can develop into the very opposite of everything it represents in America when it is thrust upon those who are in sufficiently prepared for it. But it is not only other people in other places that are feeling the pressure of ever increasing choice. Americans themselves are discovering that unlimited choice seems more attractive in theory than in practice. We all have physical, mental and emotional limitations that make it impossible for us to process every single choice we encounter, even in the grocery store, let alone over the course of our entire lives. A number of my studies have shown that when you give people 10 or more options when they're making a choice, they make poorer decisions, whether it be health care, investment, other critical areas. Yet still, many of us believe that we should make all our own choices and seek out even more of them.
You must never say no to choice.
To examine this, a couple from America were about to have their first baby. One night when the lady was 7 months pregnant, she started to experience contractions and was rushed to the emergency room. The baby was delivered through a c-section, but the baby suffered cerebral anoxia, a loss of oxygen to the brain. Unable to breathe on her own, she was put on a ventilator. Two days later, the doctors gave the family a choice: they could either remove the baby off the life support, in which case she would die within a matter of hours, or they could keep her on life support, in which case she might still die within a matter of days. If she survived, she would remain in a permanent vegetative state, never able to walk, talk or interact with others. What do they do? What does any parent do? American and French parents were interviewed. They had all suffered the same tragedy. In all cases, the life support was removed, and the infants had died. But there was a big difference. In France, the doctors decided whether and when the life support would be removed, while in the United States, the final decision rested with the parents. We wondered: does this have an effect on how the parents cope with the loss of their loved one? We found that it did. Even up to a year later, American parents were more likely to express negative emotions, as compared to their French counterparts. French parents were more likely to say things like, Noah was here for so little time, but he taught us so much. He gave us a new perspective on life. American parents were more likely to say things like, what if? What if? Another parent complained, I feel as if they purposefully tortured me. How did they get me to do that? And another parent said, I feel as if I've played a role in an execution. But when the American parents were asked if they would rather have had the doctors make the decision, they all said no! They could not imagine turning that choice over to another, even though having made that choice made them feel trapped, guilty, angry, clinically depressed. These parents could not contemplate giving up the choice, because to do so would have gone contrary to everything they had been taught ad everything they had come to believe about the power and purpose of choice.
Joan didion writes, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the idea with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.
The story Americans tell, the story upon which the American dream depends, is the story of limitless choice. This narrative promises so much: freedom, happiness, success. It lays the world at your feet and says, you can have anything, everything! It's a great story, and it's understandable why they would be reluctant to revise it. But when you take a close look, you start to see the holes, and you start to see that the story can be told in many other ways. Americans have so often tried to disseminate their ideas of choice, believing that they will be, or ought to be, welcomed with open hearts and minds. But the history books and the daily news tell us it doesn't always work out that way. The phantasmagoria, the actual experience that we try to understand and organise through narrative, varies from place to place. No single narrative serves the needs of everyone everywhere. Moreover, Americans themselves could benefit from incorporating new perspectives into their own narrative, which has been driving their choices for so long. It is poetry that is lost in translation. This suggest that whatever is beautiful and moving, whatever gives us a new way to see, cannot be communicated to those who speak a different language. It is poetry that is gained in translation, suggesting that translation can be a creative, transformative act. When it comes to choice, we have far more to gain than to lose by engaging in the many translations of the narratives.
Fundamental differences in our ideas about choice.
Assumptions.
1. Make your own choices. If a choice affects you, then you should be the one to make it. This is the only way to ensure that your preferences and interests will be most fully accounted for. It is essential for success. In America the primary focus of choice is the individual. People must choose for themselves, sometimes sticking to their guns, regardless of what other people want or recommend. It's called being true to yourself. But do all individuals benefit from taking such an approach to choice? English kid. Self, teacher or parent telling you what task to do. It doesn't matter who does the choosing, if the task was dictated by another, their performance suffered.
English-Asian kid. Self, teacher or parent. Perform better if told what to do by their parent. Can you please tell my mommy I did it just the way she said. The first generation children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents approach to choice, for them, choice was not just a way of defining and asserting their individuality, but a way to Create community and harmony by deferring to the choices of people whom they trusted and respected. If they had a concept of being true to ones self, than that self, most likely, was composed, not of an individual, but of a collective. Success was just as much about pleasing key figures as it was satisfying ones own preferences. Or, you could say that the individuals preferences were shaped by the preferences of specific others. The assumption then that we do best when the individual self chooses only holds when that self is clearly divided from others. When, in contrast, two or more individuals see their choices and their outcomes as intimately connected, then they may amplify one another's success by turning choosing into a collective act. To insist that they choose independently might actually compromise both their performance and their relationships. Yes that is exactly what the American paradigm demands. It leaves little room for interdependence or an acknowledgment of individual fallibility. It requires that everyone treat choice as a private and self defining act. People that have grown up in such a paradigm might find it motivating, but it is a mistake to assume that everyone thrives under the pressure of choosing alone.
2. More options > Better Choices. The more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice. Walmart, with 100,000 different products, amazon with 27 million books and match.com with what is it? 15 million date possiblities now. You will surely find the perfect match. Let's test this assumption by heading to Eastern Europe. Interviewed residents of former communist countries, who had all faced the challenge of transitioning to a more democratic and capitalistic society. One of the most interesting revelations came not from the answer to a question, but from a simple gesture of hospitality. When my the participants arrived for their interview, I offered them a set of drinks: coke, diet coke, sprite, dr pepper, Pepsi, diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, during the very first session, which was ran in Russia, one of the participants made a gesture that really am caught me off guard. Oh but It doesn't matter, it's all just fizzy drinks, that's just one choice. I was struck by this comment, that from then on, i started to offer all the participants the seven fizzy drinks and I asked them, how many choices are these? Again and again, they perceived these seven different fizzy drinks, not as seven choices, but as one choice: soft drink or no soft drink. When I put out juice and water in addition to these seven soft drinks, now they perceived it as only three, juice water and soft drinks. Compare this to the die hard devotion of many westerners, not just to a particular flavour of soft drink, but to a particular brand. You know, research shows repeatedly that we can't actually tell the difference between coke and Pepsi. Of course you and I know, coke I the better choice. For modern American people who are exposed to more options and more ads associated with options than anyone else in the world, choice Is just as much about who they are as it is about what the product is. Combine this with the assumption that more choices are always better, and you have a group of people for whom every little difference matters and so every choice matters. But for Eastern Europeans, the sudden availability of all these consumer products on the market place was a deluge. They were flooded with choice before they could protest that they didn't know how to swim. What words and images do you associate with choice? Guy from Poland, Ah, for me it is fear. There are some dilemmas you see. I am used to no choice. Guy from Kiev, it is too much. We do not need everything that is there. Sociology professor from Warsaw States - The older generation jumped from nothing to choice all around them. They were never given a chance to learn how to react. I do not need 20 kinds of chewing gum, I don't mean to say that I want no choice, but many of these choices are quite artificial. 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. Americans train their whole lives to play spot the difference. They practice this from such an early age that they've come to believe that everyone must be born with this ability. In fact, all humans share a basic need and desire for choice, we don't all see choice in the same places or to the same extent. When someone can't see how one choice is unlike another, or when there are too many choices to compare and contrast, the process of choosing can be confusing and frustrating. Instead of making better choices, we become overwhelmed by choice, sometimes even afraid of it. Choice no longer offers opportunities but imposes constraints. It's not a marker of liberation, but of suffocation by meaningless minutiae. In other words, choice can develop into the very opposite of everything it represents in America when it is thrust upon those who are in sufficiently prepared for it. But it is not only other people in other places that are feeling the pressure of ever increasing choice. Americans themselves are discovering that unlimited choice seems more attractive in theory than in practice. We all have physical, mental and emotional limitations that make it impossible for us to process every single choice we encounter, even in the grocery store, let alone over the course of our entire lives. A number of my studies have shown that when you give people 10 or more options when they're making a choice, they make poorer decisions, whether it be health care, investment, other critical areas. Yet still, many of us believe that we should make all our own choices and seek out even more of them.
You must never say no to choice.
To examine this, a couple from America were about to have their first baby. One night when the lady was 7 months pregnant, she started to experience contractions and was rushed to the emergency room. The baby was delivered through a c-section, but the baby suffered cerebral anoxia, a loss of oxygen to the brain. Unable to breathe on her own, she was put on a ventilator. Two days later, the doctors gave the family a choice: they could either remove the baby off the life support, in which case she would die within a matter of hours, or they could keep her on life support, in which case she might still die within a matter of days. If she survived, she would remain in a permanent vegetative state, never able to walk, talk or interact with others. What do they do? What does any parent do? American and French parents were interviewed. They had all suffered the same tragedy. In all cases, the life support was removed, and the infants had died. But there was a big difference. In France, the doctors decided whether and when the life support would be removed, while in the United States, the final decision rested with the parents. We wondered: does this have an effect on how the parents cope with the loss of their loved one? We found that it did. Even up to a year later, American parents were more likely to express negative emotions, as compared to their French counterparts. French parents were more likely to say things like, Noah was here for so little time, but he taught us so much. He gave us a new perspective on life. American parents were more likely to say things like, what if? What if? Another parent complained, I feel as if they purposefully tortured me. How did they get me to do that? And another parent said, I feel as if I've played a role in an execution. But when the American parents were asked if they would rather have had the doctors make the decision, they all said no! They could not imagine turning that choice over to another, even though having made that choice made them feel trapped, guilty, angry, clinically depressed. These parents could not contemplate giving up the choice, because to do so would have gone contrary to everything they had been taught ad everything they had come to believe about the power and purpose of choice.
Joan didion writes, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the idea with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.
The story Americans tell, the story upon which the American dream depends, is the story of limitless choice. This narrative promises so much: freedom, happiness, success. It lays the world at your feet and says, you can have anything, everything! It's a great story, and it's understandable why they would be reluctant to revise it. But when you take a close look, you start to see the holes, and you start to see that the story can be told in many other ways. Americans have so often tried to disseminate their ideas of choice, believing that they will be, or ought to be, welcomed with open hearts and minds. But the history books and the daily news tell us it doesn't always work out that way. The phantasmagoria, the actual experience that we try to understand and organise through narrative, varies from place to place. No single narrative serves the needs of everyone everywhere. Moreover, Americans themselves could benefit from incorporating new perspectives into their own narrative, which has been driving their choices for so long. It is poetry that is lost in translation. This suggest that whatever is beautiful and moving, whatever gives us a new way to see, cannot be communicated to those who speak a different language. It is poetry that is gained in translation, suggesting that translation can be a creative, transformative act. When it comes to choice, we have far more to gain than to lose by engaging in the many translations of the narratives.
