A632.2.3.RB - Sheena Iyengar: How to Make Choosing Easier

A632.2.3.RB - Sheena Iyengar: How to Make Choosing Easier

Sheena Iyengar has four methodologies to help with choice overload. Choice overload is that feeling you get when you go into a kitchen store at the outlet mall and immediately start sweating – you had no idea there were that many whisk options. No idea. Her first recommendation is to cut the choices down. If there are fourteen whisks in front of you but you know that you are going to be using it in a very expensive non-stick coated pan, you can cut all of those that are metal. The metal ones may end up scratching your expensive pan. Now you are down to four choices and suddenly the task is much simpler. Her second technique is concretization. That in order for people to understand the differences between the choices, they have to be able to understand the consequences associated with each choice, and that the consequences need to be felt in a vivid sort of way, in a very concrete way. (Iyengar, 2011) This kind of goes back to the whisks – we already know that the consequence of buying a metal whisk is that it might damage our expensive pan. The third technique is to categorize the choices. We can handle more categories than we can handle choices. (Iyengar, 2011). If I’m looking at fourteen whisks, I can categorize them in a couple ways: tall or short, plastic or metal, round or oval. Instead of having to choose from fourteen individual things, I can choose from two or three categories. It’s a series of ways to eliminate what I don’t want from what I actually want. The fourth technique is to condition for complexity. It turns out we can actually handle a lot more information than we think we can, we've just got to take it a little easier. We have to gradually increase the complexity. (Iyengar, 2011) By eliminating the ten whisks we know we don’t want or can’t use, we have four choices. We can select the perfect whisk and feel confident in our choice and in turn ready for looking at something a little more complex – picking out a new wooden spoon or a paring knife set.

Personally, when I get overwhelmed with choices – like every day at the cafeteria – I mentally cut the things I know I don’t want. Since I recently got braces, I start with the things I know I can’t eat right now like nuts or crunchy things and sticky/chewy things. Right now eating a sandwich is tricky because it’s hard to bite down on things. So I can eliminate the sub shop and some of the grill items. The salad bar is usually a good bet because I can load up the lettuces with legumes, cooked squash, chopped eggs, mushrooms, and other less crunchy things. I can also go to the area that serves mashed potatoes and meatloaf or other meat that I can cut up and chew easier. Although when the gyro guy comes it is all bets off – it is worth the trouble of getting gyro out of my braces to eat it. I suppose that would be the concretization technique. I know that I’ll have to get all of the gyro out of my braces but it’s worth this consequence to enjoy a gyro. Eating a salt-water taffy doesn’t appeal to me as much so the consequence of trying to work that taffy out of my teeth is not worth it so that choice would be easy. However, if I was going to do a working lunch and had to eat lunch while in a meeting, I wouldn’t choose a gyro. That would be awful. I would probably choose a tomato soup and pudding.

These are kind of silly examples but I think when you figure out which way works best for you when making smaller choices, you can apply it to most of the other big decisions. For me, narrowing down options, or using the cutting technique, goes a long way in my decision making. Iyengar used the example of buying a car on-line. I have gone down that road before and have gotten hung up on the details and choices. Now though, before I shop for things on-line like that, I narrow down the things that are more important to me – like the features of air conditioning, power windows/seats, and gas mileage. I don’t really care what color it is, or if it has cloth or leather interior. I also don’t care what kind of wheels it has or rims. I prefer four doors because I don’t want people having to do weird yoga poses to get into the backseat. The other choices I can use the default options on because I have cut them out of my “must have” categories.

As a member of an organization, I think it is better to make choices based on concretization. Understanding the consequences of a choice in an organization can make it easier to know the right thing to do. Last year, our organization went through the heart-wrenching union vote. Our mechanics voted no and we stayed union-free. This choice was made because of the consequences they knew or assumed would happen to them if Boeing SC became a union shop. They knew that the support teams would have less access to helping production and that suddenly the gap between hourly employee and manager would keep deeper because there would be a union steward there too. Not that all of the consequences would have been negative – but understanding what would happen once the vote took place helped a lot of the mechanics make their choice. Everything we do within an organization can have an effect on someone else – choices can impact employees and departments on many levels. I think it’s very important to know what the consequences are so even if you still have to make a less desirable choice, you can still prepare for the inevitable consequence.  

References:

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., Gunther, R. E., & Wharton School. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. New York: Wiley.

Iyengar, S. (2011) How to make choosing easier. TEDTalks. TEDSalon NY2011. https://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose/transcript#t-7949