Sheena Iyengar Quotes about Choices

Choice is the only tool we have that enables us to go from who we are today to who we want to be tomorrow.

We have the ability to create choice by altering our interpretations of the world.

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. —Archibald MacLeish

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?

When people are given a moderate number of options (4 to 6) rather than a large number (20 to 30), they are more likely to make a choice, are more confident in their decisions, and are happier with what they choose.

The typical American reports making about 70 [choices] in a typical day.

Consumers presented with six choices on an item were twice as likely to buy as consumers overwhelmed with 24 varieties of the same item.

What leads us astray is confusing more choices with more control. Because it is not clear that the more choices you have the more in control you feel. We have more choices than we've ever had before.

I pick what are my priorities and I limit those priorities to less than five in my life and really in those particular areas put in the energy to try to make good choices.

If we ask for more and more material for the construction, i.e. more and more choice, we're likely to end up with a lot of combinations that don't do much for us or are far more complex than they need to be.

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.

We do the same thing in our own lives, embracing information that supports what we already prefer or vindicates choices we previously made.After all, it feels better to justify our opinions rather than challenge them, to contemplate only the pros and relegate the cons to the back of our minds. However, if we want to make the most of choice, we have to be willing to make ourselves uncomfortable. The question is, if we are willing, how exactly do we go about fortifying ourselves against these biases?

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.

When I do have choice I try to be very picky about... or shall I say choosey about when I choose. I don't automatically decide that I must be the one to choose or that it's important for me to make every choice in my life.

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.

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.

Too many choices can overwhelm us and cause us to not choose at all. For businesses, this means that if they offer us too many choices, we may not buy anything.

So most of the time when we are confronted by more, rather than a few, choices we're often novices and so we don't really know how to differentiate these various options.

The expansion of choice has become an explosion of choice.

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.

We make choices and are in turn made by them.

When companies try to guess what consumers want, they essentially make the choice for consumers.

I mean we know that some choice makes you better off than no choice. Now do we get better off if we go from a lot of choice versus a few choices? And there I think the answer is much, much, much more complicated.

We are sculptors finding ourselves in the evolution of choosing, not in the results of choice.

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