A rose by any other name looks different, and probably also smells different.
Sheena Iyengar through her studies on culturally and geographically different people tries to discover the effect choice has on people. Its all a matter of perspective she says. She demonstrates this by considering the 3 assumptions of choice:
- Make your own choice
- More options -> Better Choices
- Never say no to choice
Speaking for myself, in the first two points I am the anti-american kind of person. In a group, I leave the choice on the others. I care little about self happiness as long as most of the people in the group are happy. It is perhaps because of how I have been brought up. Dad made all of my educational choices. He told me what to study and mom dictated when I studied. And when we went out on a family outing or we bought anything, being the elder brother, I mostly let my brother choose. So the story of my life has mostly been that of adjusting to the choices made around me.
As for the second assumption, once again I do not believe more options make it easier to choose the best product for yourself. In fact, lots of options scare me. Unless two things are vastly different I cannot choose one from another. If you ask me choose between two varieties of black leather bag that look almost the same, have almost the same number of pockets, etc; I will come up blank. Similarly, if you ask my opinion on which platinum credit card to have, I am sorry but they are all the same to me. INOX and PVR are the same to me as well.
The third one I have not yet formed any opinion. I do not really agree with the study she did to elucidate that point. I do not like the idea of having no choice. After all, I should be able to change things if I get uncomfortable. But yes, at times it becomes easier when someone else makes a choice for you. When I got a rank of 404 in IIT JEE entrance exam, I was pretty happy until dad told me of the tough choice I had to make – Electrical in Madras, or Computer Science in Kharagpur. At that time it was a very tough choice to make. I let dad make the choice for me, trusting his decision, which considered introspectively, was the best decision. He was able to make the correct decision because he knew of my interest in computers.
I think people should always have the right to choice. But they should learn when to exercise the right them self, and when to let others make it for them.
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