{"id":8252,"date":"2015-09-01T07:51:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/?p=8252"},"modified":"2015-08-11T11:27:34","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T15:27:34","slug":"ted-talk-how-to-make-choosing-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/2015\/09\/01\/ted-talk-how-to-make-choosing-easier\/","title":{"rendered":"TED Talk: How to make choosing easier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Choice overload first came to my attention through reading <em><a class=\"bookTitle\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/10639.The_Paradox_of_Choice?from_search=true&amp;search_version=service\">The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less<\/a><\/em>. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/2008\/06\/29\/the-paradox-of-choice\/\">Schwartz&#8217; strategy<\/a>.)\u00c2\u00a0Sheena Iyengar has some newer research on choosing.<\/p>\n<p>The difficulty is people <b>BELIEVE<\/b> they need more choices to make a good decision. Lots of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/2012\/04\/03\/perfect-spaghetti-sauce\/\">choices make us happier<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0in part because we invest\u00c2\u00a0more time making one which in turn\u00c2\u00a0we need to justify those spent resources with pleasure. (I&#8217;m thinking this is similar to how that $100 HDMI cable makes me feel better about the signal quality when technically it is not much better than the $5 one.)<\/p>\n<p>The funny thing, though, is that all these choices prevent the making of them. Sales go up with fewer.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.ted.com\/talks\/sheena_iyengar_how_to_make_choosing_easier\" sandbox=\"allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen><\/iframe>\n<ol>\n<li>Cut : get rid of\u00c2\u00a0useless\u00c2\u00a0alternatives<\/li>\n<li>Concretize : make it real<\/li>\n<li>Categorize : make differences\u00c2\u00a0understandable<\/li>\n<li>Condition : order choices obvious to nuanced<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Funny\u00c2\u00a0enough, I also posted Malcolm Gladwell&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/2012\/04\/03\/perfect-spaghetti-sauce\/\">Pursuit of the Perfect Spaghetti Sauce<\/a>. This is an illustration of how\u00c2\u00a0we get to choice overload. The revolution was that relying on self-reported data is unreliable because people say what\u00c2\u00a0is the conventional wisdom not their true desire. Taste tests are better because it measures what they actually like.\u00c2\u00a0<strong>BUT<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0people are terrible at understanding what they want, which is why I think they bog down in choice overload. Too many options makes it difficult to figure out what is right for &#8220;us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Iyengar has another TED Talk which has a good primer on choosing. The end has a great story about her experiment with choosing a nail polish (she&#8217;s blind and suspected those advising her were influenced by the name).<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sheena Iyengar: The art of choosing\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.ted.com\/talks\/sheena_iyengar_the_art_of_choosing\" sandbox=\"allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen><\/iframe>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Choice overload first came to my attention through reading The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. (Schwartz&#8217; strategy.)\u00c2\u00a0Sheena Iyengar has some newer research on choosing. The difficulty is people BELIEVE they need more choices to make a good decision. Lots of choices make us happier\u00c2\u00a0in part because we invest\u00c2\u00a0more time making one which in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[462],"tags":[2165,3023,3025,3024,3022,1856],"class_list":["post-8252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","tag-behavioral-economics","tag-choice-overload","tag-decision-fatigue","tag-decision-theory","tag-sheena-iyengar","tag-ted-talk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rUBW-296","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ezrasf.com\/wplog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}