Sheena Iyengar has been studying choice for over a decade, and gets to do it at an Ivy League business school. Your reviewer didn't know this before she bought the book. She would have chosen it anyway.
Which gets to the start of several well-researched aspects of the subject at hand. Although the insistence that more choice is always and everywhere better can sometimes seem ideologically blind and dogmatic, it is a general finding that it is preferred by humans, from infant onwards, and also by animals. This manifests even when there is no ex-ante advantage coming from autonomous selection. Similarly if choice is removed but provision remains identical (such as is the case for zoo animals, or at the Hotel California), displeasure results. One reason for this is innate desire for control, which choice is, heuristically or otherwise, associated with. And that innate desire was probably honed thanks to its evolutionary fitness, which mostly out-competed its absence.
So far, so pedestrian. But it can work in reverse for real benefit. The ability to create choice by altering one's interpretation of circumstance made life-saving differences for survivors of catastrophe--such as Steven Callahan (at sea) or Joe Simpson (on a mountain). Such congition can be engendered experimentally as well, turning potential victims into potential victors. In less extreme scenarios, a conscious effort to perceive choice (a choice to have choice, if one likes) will mostly increase optimism and well being.
This is not restricted to the domain of individualism. The author's parents' arranged marriage (every ceremonial detail was arranged, not just who the marital partners were) was apparently freely welcomed in a culture where choosing to do what others expected or decided ranked higher, and where deference to others' wisdom seemed superior to the type of individual choice (spouse selection) that was viewed as little more than a wild stab in the dark. So someone's actual understanding of control is not uniform, but comes from her beliefs.
And there isn't really an objective truth here--neither individualism nor collectivism has dominated the human condition. Iyengar makes an effort to position these as "freedom to" (collective) and "freedom from" (individual). Some optimum combination of both of these will yield the maximum benefit obtainable from choice. That means a central authority that gets out of the way (to increase choice) . . . except for when it gets back in the way (to increase or transfer capability to achieve). Here the author is channeling Amartya Sen in large measure, though she never mentions him. Ivy League competitiveness perhaps. Quite apart from the role of a state though, there is a handy debunking of the thought that collectivism mindlessly conforms, whereas individualism mindfully chooses. (Or the reverse).
On a separate level, conformity to one's early selection--curtailing future choice perhaps--in the realm of ideas, preference, policy, [list truncated], is a systematic feature of many folks' behaviour. But it shouldn't be. This gets related to the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and the attendant rise in demand for self-justification that your reviewer covered in "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)". Ex-ante, choice is opportunity, but ex-post it is closure. Both the former (see penultimate paragraph) and the latter are over-rated. In the case of the latter there are better ways to relieve dissonance and be more objective (open), such as withholding judgement, preference, and playing personal devil's advocate (the practice of arguing against one's priors). Your reviewer directs the reader to chapters three and four to make this less abstract, as she is conscious of limiting review word-count. Bottom-line is making more of choice requires discomfort. Sorry.
Iyengar has a novel take on rational choice strategy (that which homo-economicus does twenty four/seven) as well. Pros and cons--which imply measurability and other desiderata common to most business and social science inquiry--are flawed (she says) by undermining emotional considerations. This bigging-up of instinct is less woolly than it appears since much of instinct, or emotional intelligence, or intuitive perception, can be tied back to semi-conscious sampling of a mass of personal, experiential observational data. Gary A Klein ("Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions") has much more on this, and his book is truly excellent. And anyway, in the realm of rational judgement, the reader is respectfully asked to check her dispassion. We have biases, and also biases that support those biases. And there is--actually--no true scientist. A delicious quote is: "In the land of the sighted, a blind woman is queen" (The author has been blind since her early teens).
Finally, there is the downside of choice. Iyengar illustrates this through the powerful perspective of decisions about life support for a critically ill patient. If next of kin make the selection, they on-balance find it significantly harder to live with whatever it is. If dispassionate professionals do--or even if these ones merely suggest/recommend--then the burden is lighter. Here, choice becomes bound up with being a causal agent. Freedom becomes responsibility, and that is not always empowering. Sometimes it's the total opposite. And the harm of action is weighted much more heavily than the harm of inaction by most. (This is probably why evil triumphs, when/because good women do nothing). And while "Sophie's Choice" dilemmas are clearly not desirable in the slightest, the author usefully transitions away from extremities after having made her point, and broadens the issue towards an advertisement for an: "I'll have what she's having" mindset as the appropriate and best one in some conditions.
In closing, your reviewer should point out that she delayed watching in-flight films for an hour or so in order to write this up instead. That may be a measure of her rating of this book. Could also be because she flies so much she's probably seen them all anyway. You choose.
Which gets to the start of several well-researched aspects of the subject at hand. Although the insistence that more choice is always and everywhere better can sometimes seem ideologically blind and dogmatic, it is a general finding that it is preferred by humans, from infant onwards, and also by animals. This manifests even when there is no ex-ante advantage coming from autonomous selection. Similarly if choice is removed but provision remains identical (such as is the case for zoo animals, or at the Hotel California), displeasure results. One reason for this is innate desire for control, which choice is, heuristically or otherwise, associated with. And that innate desire was probably honed thanks to its evolutionary fitness, which mostly out-competed its absence.
So far, so pedestrian. But it can work in reverse for real benefit. The ability to create choice by altering one's interpretation of circumstance made life-saving differences for survivors of catastrophe--such as Steven Callahan (at sea) or Joe Simpson (on a mountain). Such congition can be engendered experimentally as well, turning potential victims into potential victors. In less extreme scenarios, a conscious effort to perceive choice (a choice to have choice, if one likes) will mostly increase optimism and well being.
This is not restricted to the domain of individualism. The author's parents' arranged marriage (every ceremonial detail was arranged, not just who the marital partners were) was apparently freely welcomed in a culture where choosing to do what others expected or decided ranked higher, and where deference to others' wisdom seemed superior to the type of individual choice (spouse selection) that was viewed as little more than a wild stab in the dark. So someone's actual understanding of control is not uniform, but comes from her beliefs.
And there isn't really an objective truth here--neither individualism nor collectivism has dominated the human condition. Iyengar makes an effort to position these as "freedom to" (collective) and "freedom from" (individual). Some optimum combination of both of these will yield the maximum benefit obtainable from choice. That means a central authority that gets out of the way (to increase choice) . . . except for when it gets back in the way (to increase or transfer capability to achieve). Here the author is channeling Amartya Sen in large measure, though she never mentions him. Ivy League competitiveness perhaps. Quite apart from the role of a state though, there is a handy debunking of the thought that collectivism mindlessly conforms, whereas individualism mindfully chooses. (Or the reverse).
On a separate level, conformity to one's early selection--curtailing future choice perhaps--in the realm of ideas, preference, policy, [list truncated], is a systematic feature of many folks' behaviour. But it shouldn't be. This gets related to the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and the attendant rise in demand for self-justification that your reviewer covered in "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)". Ex-ante, choice is opportunity, but ex-post it is closure. Both the former (see penultimate paragraph) and the latter are over-rated. In the case of the latter there are better ways to relieve dissonance and be more objective (open), such as withholding judgement, preference, and playing personal devil's advocate (the practice of arguing against one's priors). Your reviewer directs the reader to chapters three and four to make this less abstract, as she is conscious of limiting review word-count. Bottom-line is making more of choice requires discomfort. Sorry.
Iyengar has a novel take on rational choice strategy (that which homo-economicus does twenty four/seven) as well. Pros and cons--which imply measurability and other desiderata common to most business and social science inquiry--are flawed (she says) by undermining emotional considerations. This bigging-up of instinct is less woolly than it appears since much of instinct, or emotional intelligence, or intuitive perception, can be tied back to semi-conscious sampling of a mass of personal, experiential observational data. Gary A Klein ("Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions") has much more on this, and his book is truly excellent. And anyway, in the realm of rational judgement, the reader is respectfully asked to check her dispassion. We have biases, and also biases that support those biases. And there is--actually--no true scientist. A delicious quote is: "In the land of the sighted, a blind woman is queen" (The author has been blind since her early teens).
Finally, there is the downside of choice. Iyengar illustrates this through the powerful perspective of decisions about life support for a critically ill patient. If next of kin make the selection, they on-balance find it significantly harder to live with whatever it is. If dispassionate professionals do--or even if these ones merely suggest/recommend--then the burden is lighter. Here, choice becomes bound up with being a causal agent. Freedom becomes responsibility, and that is not always empowering. Sometimes it's the total opposite. And the harm of action is weighted much more heavily than the harm of inaction by most. (This is probably why evil triumphs, when/because good women do nothing). And while "Sophie's Choice" dilemmas are clearly not desirable in the slightest, the author usefully transitions away from extremities after having made her point, and broadens the issue towards an advertisement for an: "I'll have what she's having" mindset as the appropriate and best one in some conditions.
In closing, your reviewer should point out that she delayed watching in-flight films for an hour or so in order to write this up instead. That may be a measure of her rating of this book. Could also be because she flies so much she's probably seen them all anyway. You choose.