Iyengar, who was born in Canada to Sikh parents and who grew up in the Unites States, mines her personal life for her research, and what a rich seam it is. Iyengar uses examples from medicine, art, music, and even her parents’ marriage to show how we constantly engage (often unawares) in decision-making, and indeed, how such decision-making defines and is defined by us. The Art of Choosing, while encompassing Iyengar’s earlier research, deals with a lot more than behavioral economics. (The first 2 minutes of the clip describe the study.) Here’s a clip explaining the study, if you are really interested. In very simple terms: we make better decisions when the number of options is limited our decisions are less optimal when we are confronted with a number of choices. Iyengar is perhaps best known for her “jam study”, a ground-breaking experiment which proved that there’s such a thing as too much choice. Here’s the (very slick, but don’t hold that against it) clip that made me read this book. Iyengar is a professor at Columbia Business School, and The Art of Choosing presumably dealt with consumer choice hadn’t I left the MBA business world precisely *not* to read texts of this kind? But Sheena had attached a link to her book’s trailer, and on viewing it, I realized the book dealt with a lot more than choosing Coke versus Pepsi.

When Sheena Iyengar emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in reviewing her new book, I almost said no. Update: My interview with Iyengar is up on July’s Bookslut.

The art of choosing book