For this week's blog I will be talking about choices. The meat of this post is based on a lecture from Dr. Sheena Lyengar, The Art of Choosing. In her very elegant speech Dr. Lyengar drew a defining line between America's infatuation with options and how other cultures around the world feel about today's plethora of choices. She made some interesting observations to the assumptions we as Americans share when we think of the "right" to have choices. These assumptions are:
- Make your own choices.
- More options leads to better choices, and
- Never say no to choice.
In the land of the free our culture seems to connect the right to choose with freedom. It is almost unthinkable to stand by and allow another person or entity to make our decisions for us. Where we live, where we work, what we choose to do with our time and money are all choices Americans feel strongly about making for ourselves. As a culture we place the highest value on our ability to make our own choices. But, is this concept always a good thing? I mean, shouldn't some choices be up to those who actually know what they are doing? For example, just because I have internet access and e-trade.com does this make me the best person to make financial decisions on how and where I should invest my money? Granted, it is my money after all, but seriously... my stock broker friends spent years in school, studying and analyzing stocks, dissecting market trends and practicing their trade on a daily basis. When I overhear them "talking shop" amongst each other they could very well be speaking Latin for all I know. Yet, I still have the choice to fumble around on my own with my hard earned money in hopes of making a profit. Maybe the right choice would lie in who I choose to invest my money for me, but that requires a lot of trust on my part. Do I really want to give that kind of power away to a broker I may not even know? So, in response to the first assumption maybe I shouldn't always make my own choices. Either that, or I better become well versed in every facet of my decision making process, but who has time for that?
#2. More options leads to better choices. I spent 8 years of my life in the car business. In those years I worked for Toyota and Mercedes-Benz for the most part, and the dealerships I work for were known as mega-stores. High volume sales has taken over high profit sales in direct response to information available to the general public. Back in the old days of the car trade it was pretty hard to tell how much profit the dealer was making on a car. Good luck getting your hands on a true invoice! But now there are several websites with the sole purpose of sharing cost and invoices for the consumer to make the right choices. Instead of making a nice profit on a few cars the industry has changed to making smaller profits on a LOT of cars. I can not tell you how many times I have seen a customer get overwhelmed with the many options available to them. Surely they could find the perfect car for their needs or wants with SO many choices to choose from. My experiences tell me otherwise. As a seasoned sales person I found that by asking just a few qualifying questions like what they will be using the car for, what features are most important to them, do they have a color preference, what type of budget have they prepared, and so on I eliminated the choices down to just a few good options. This narrowing of the choices made for happier customers and a well paid sales guy. In reality, less is sometimes more.
Finally, Never say no to choice. I find it very hard to deal with absolutes. Never and always are some of the most overused fallacies in the book. However, going back to the choice-freedom American value theory, I believe there requires a great deal of trust needed in society as a whole, those who lead us, and our sense of individualism for Americans to give up our tight grip on making our own choices. I also believe this assumption is pretty well founded. As long as I have the ability to choose or not choose to make a choice I can go on about my life feeling warm and cozy under the blanket of freedom woven by my country's ideals. It is almost impossible for me to imagine a world where there is no choices. History has taught me that the old class system in Europe was kind of like this concept. Your father made shoes, his father made shoes, and there was really no other choice out there for you and you were going to make shoes as well. People assumed their roles within their societies and that was that. I think the shift from that idealism was spawned by the belief that humans aren't supposed to be void of choices, and as long as I have that ability I feel my basic need of self worth is fulfilled.
In conclusion, I can absolutely appreciate Dr. Lyengar's view points on misplaced values on having and making choices in the American culture. From an objective point of view I can see some flaws in the assumptions carried by our culture. In a world so dominated by advertising, consumer spending, and technological advancements it seems we have more choices than ever. But does reality spin the same story? Are we, in effect, constricted by so many options? Have we as a nation placed too much stock in the choices portfolio? If so, we may have shifted from a country of independent free-thinkers to a nation of sheep being led by money hungry shepherds. As Dr. Lyengar noted in her experiment at the nail salon when choosing between Ballet Slipper or Adorable pink nail polish... do we really need fifty shades of pink?
Please take some time and check out Dr. Sheena Lyengar's lecture at:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html
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