We're discussed the points Sheena Iyengar made in the second half of her talk:
The more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice.
You will surely find the perfect match.
True or false?
False.
Why?
Because it will make me confused, because the choices become more and I must think about more reason to choose the right thing.
This makes me think about the trend for curated websites and stuff like that. Curated means someone has selected it for you according to a set of principles. Like a set of products. So you can go to a kind of shop that you know will have about what you need, and you only have to make a choice of like, three.
But always, I think it's conveneint, but I'm always confused about what should I select for what I need. You hear, this is great, that is great...
Yeah, everything is great!
So what is the best for me?
So you have to know what you want in this situation.
And comments online, they'll say A is best, someone else will say B is best
So you have to know what you particularoly need.
Also you have to know a lot about the products, for instance cameras.
(everybody:) Oh, exactly!!
How do you know? Canon, Nikon, Panasonic?
Which is the best?
Actually, no thing is the best, it's just what's suitable for you. You have certain requirements.
But if you don't know you can get something, you don't know you can choose it
So we need practice choosing.
Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Sprite, Apple Sidra, Dr. Pepper.
How many choices are here? Which would you choose?
Apple Sidra. 7 choices.
Seven. None.
Why non?
I don't like soft drinks.
Yeah, I would still choose one, cuz I'd be like, well, i've only got soda, so, dr pepper.
I wouldn't choose one.
Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Sprite, Apple Sidra, Dr. Pepper, Juice, Tea, Coffee.
How many choices are here? Which would you choose?
Ten. My first choice would be coffee, then tea, then the last one is juice. Again, no soda.
Ya, I think it depends on the situation, did I eat dinner, or if I ate meat, I would choose coke or apple sidra, but if I"m eating cakes or bread, i would choose coffee or tea.
For mre there are only four choices. Soda, and juice, tea and coffe. I would chooose coffee first and then tea and then juice.
I would choose juice here, because I'm gtrying to avoid caffeing and sugar.
Does your choice of product define you as a person?
Yes. Because there are some people, they choose to drink Starbucks, and some people will choose to drink City Cafe, so they have a group, it could define people as a special group person, or something.
Like starbucks people are higher class?
hmmm...
....think of themselves as higher class?
Yes! Some people, yes.
Or they think happy is more important than save money.
Do you agree?
I think it depends on different people. A certain group of people are brand lovers, they like chanel, LV, hermes. I think that for them, they probably will pay attention to what brand you carry, and ...
Yes, they always do that!
...so that's a certain group. but for another group of people , like most of my friends, we don't actually buy brand products. And so that we don't pay attention to what brand you carry, we don't care.
So do you drink starbucks or 7-11.
I seldom go to Starbucks, I drink more City Cafe. It's more convenient for one, and it's cheaper.
I have an opinion. I think it doesn't matter if you choose a brand product or not. any kind of product you choose reflect how you think, or what importance you place on it. So I think peoples choices do define who they are, whether or not they use branded products.
The people around stacy, their choice reflects that they are not so branded products
So you're saying they're defining themselves as non-branded people?
I think this kind of person, they like branded products or certain kinds of coffee, or specific products that they recognize, they will care about what kind of things other people use or drink. And I think it is, well not unfair, but just not very comfortable for other people. Because they just care for some kind of clothes or bags.
They just care more about the clothes than who you are.
Yeah, that's what i mean.
Do Taiwanese think of brands as defining them as a person?
No, there's different groups.
There are certainly celebrity groups defining people based on what brand they have.
I think yes, some Taiwanese think of brands as defining themselves as a person. some people do. But not everyone.
Americans are exposed to more choice of products and more ads about these choices than anyone else in the world. The choice is just as much about who you are as what the product is. Combine this with the assumption that more choices are always better, and you have a group of people for whom every little difference matters and so every choice matters.
The choice is just as much about A as B. = A is at least as important as B, if not more.
So some people choose iPhone, not just because they need iPhone, maybe they also think iPhone is who they are.
So that group of people they think more choice is better, but for another group of people that assumption might not hold.
When I read that sentence, i thought, holy cow, that exactly how americans have been trained to think over the past 30 years.
But, if the choices are all bad...
Exactly!!!
You don't need many choices if you have a good product.
And you don't want a selection of bad, worse, and whatever!
And you don't want to stand there deceiding which one is lacking the least.
Like our president selection.
Exactly!!
So many candidates, but we can just choose the lesser bad one.
The lesser of two evils. The lesser of all the evils!
Yeah, and that's just messed up!
I don't need twenty kinds of chewing gum. I don't mean to say that I want no choice, but many of these choices are quite artificial.
Agree or disagree?
Yeah.
Artificial means?
Fake.
Made by people.
Somebody designed it to make things look like esomething real, or more attractive.
200 years ago, it meant the craft was very amazing. But now it means all of that above.
Recently banking has created sso many different products, but basically it's all the same.
But most of us don't know the truth.
But like for chewing gum, it's all chewing gum, with artificial ingredients.
In fact, though all humans share a basic need and desire for choice, we don't all see choice in the same places or to the same extent.
Ok, just like you and me. We share the basic need and desire. We want to buy some clothes, but we don't all see choices in the same place. Maybe you'll buy A brand, but I'll buy B brand.
Just because it basically works for you. I find that certain brands have what I want, i'm not buying them because they're that brand, but because I know that store will probably have what I need.
When someone can't see how one choice is unlike another, or when there are too many choices to compare and contrast, the process of choosing can be confusing and frustrating.
A number of my studies have shown that when you give people 10 or more options when they're making a choice, they make poorer decisions, whether it be health care, investment, other critical areas.
So your banking guys, it's just like that.
Yet still, many of us believe that we should make all our own choices and seek out even more of them.
Are you like this?
You know, it depends on what you're buying. You know, houses, of course you need to, people say you have to look at like 100-200 houses before you buy one, becaue it's very expensive, and in your whole life you'll only buy one house, and the time investiment.
But you, your mother went out and picked out a house and you bought that one.
but that's because they have a lot of experience before.
I have a question, if you have to do 100 houses, it'll take you a long time to look through them. And in this period, there will be more and more new choices.
It will be never ending.
I agree though, that you need experience with what you're going to buy, so you have to look at a bunch of models to see what's good, what you might like or not.
But sometimes it's better to get vicarious experience. What do your friends have, do you like it, do they like it?
You know, talking about the iPhone, it's really not suitable for everyone. I don't need to get on the internet on my phone, so it's not really suitaable for me. But lots of people buy it just beause their friends think it's cool, and maybe they don't really need it.
You must never say no to choice.
Agree or disagree.
No.
The choice must always be made by you.
Oh, this is okay. Because then I'm responsible for my choice, so it's my choice, so it's okay.
If the choice has a long term effect on my, of course the choice must always be made by me. But if the choice is like, choosing a restaurant, then don't ask me, I just don't care. Whatever is good.
I agree, and I think if I really care about that thing, I would like to make every choice by myself, whether i'm searching for, it by myself or asking my friends.
In a study I conducted with Simona Botti and Kristina Orfali, American and French parents were interviewed. They had all suffered the same tragedy. In all cases, the life support was removed, and the infants had died. But there was a big difference. In France, the doctors decided whether and when the life support would be removed, while in the United States, the final decision rested with the parents.
We wondered: does this have an effect on how the parents cope with the loss of their loved one? We found that it did. Even up to a year later, American parents were more likely to express negative emotions, as compared to their French counterparts.
But when the American parents were asked if they would rather have had the doctors make the decision, they all said, "No." They could not imagine turning that choice over to another, even though having made that choice made them feel trapped, guilty, angry.
Do you still feel you must never say no to choice?
In this case, if you make the choice, you feel you have to take the responsiblity.
The french people were not given the choice to accept or refuse the responsiblity.
The french doctors, based on their professional judgement...
...the doctors knew it's an impossible choice, and they don't want to...
...and the cost of keeping the baby is a waste.
I'm thinking that in the finance world, there are two arguments. some people think that every investment choice needs to be made by investors themselves. The other group of people thinks it's better to be made by professional institution.
Is it a question of responsiblity then?
But it's weird, when investors lose money, regardless if they made the choise or not, they have the right to ask the banker to make it up.
Really? under taiwan law or american law or both?
I know the case in taiwan.
But's it's a different case, right? This is about money the other is about life.
I think it's about respsonsiblity, bascially. Because money is emotion, you know? So how is it different than life, really?
So how do you think, if you are a parent.
This is why i don't like these extraordinary life-saving measures, really, because they lead to these kinds of questions. Like on the one hand, my dad lived 20 more years. But on the other, he lived with the effect of this stroke, he couldn't talk, and he was a man who loved to talk.
And so one time I was in a beauty salon, and I was trying to decide between two very light shades of pink. One was called "Ballet Slippers." And the other one was called "Adorable."
And so I asked these two ladies, and the one lady told me, "Well, you should definitely wear 'Ballet Slippers.'" "Well, what does it look like?" "Well, it's a very elegant shade of pink." "Okay, great." The other lady tells me to wear "Adorable." "What does it look like?" "It's a glamorous shade of pink." And so I asked them, "Well, how do I tell them apart? What's different about them?" And they said, "Well, one is elegant, the other one's glamorous."
And what I wondered was whether they were being affected by the name or the content of the color, so I decided to do a little experiment. So I brought these two bottles of nail polish into the laboratory, and I stripped the labels off. And I brought women into the laboratory, and I asked them, "Which one would you pick?" 50 percent of the women accused me of playing a trick, of putting the same color nail polish in both those bottles. At which point you start to wonder who the trick's really played on. Now, of the women that could tell them apart, when the labels were off, they picked "Adorable," and when the labels were on, they picked "Ballet Slippers."
So as far as I can tell, a rose by any other name probably does look different and maybe even smells different.
"A rose by any other name still smells as sweet", a watered-down quote from Shakespeare.
So, naming a product is sooo important! It changes the idea about the product!
Exactly!
Diferent things make things different.
For instance, you know traditional food, like stinky tofu, if we gave it a french name, maybe people would like it better.
艷 glamourous
優雅 elegant
The story Americans tell, the story upon which the American dream depends, is the story of limitless choice. This narrative promises so much: freedom, happiness, success. It lays the world at your feet and says, "You can have anything, everything." It's a great story, and it's understandable why they would be reluctant to revise it. But when you take a close look, you start to see the holes, and you start to see that the story can be told in many other ways.
Concluding Statements:
I think the choices are hard when the...it's hard to make a decision when the choice is tough, or just like health, or duties, or something. I have an example. One of my friends is a doctor, and she needs to do a surgery, because the pregnant women, she doesn't want a baby, it has a cleft palate. And during the routine checkup, this mother found the baby has a cleft palate, she decided she didn't that baby.
Even though you can fix it, with surgery!
Yeah, she didn't want it. Ok, so this patient is not my friend's patient, but she needs to do the surgery, because of some request. And when the baby, they injected the drug to induce labor, and my friend feels very uposet, because the baby was alive originally, but it got torn apart in the process, You inject the drug to induce a miscarriage, and the baby was fragile, so it was torn apart, it had such a horrible death. So the choice was made by that mother. If the mother knew that this would happen to the baby, would she still make the same decision?
So the doctor never told the mother what happened.?
No.
Yeah, but how could you? It was such a horrible thing!
How old was the baby?
A four month old fetus.
It was too fragile.
The baby was already formed
But it was too fragile, so it fell apart.
But the intent was to kill this baby, right? The doctor knew from the outset, doing this surgery, that she was going to kill the fetus.
Yes, she was gave the drug, and the body expels the fetus. It's not necessary to do a surgery. But I think it is a tough choice for the mother. And the doctor! my friend was very sad. I've never seen her so sad.
You know, you can't judge, but a cleft palate is fixable! It was a perfectly good baby!
Yes, but the choice was that. It was a very cruel choice for the baby.
Next?
I think life is made of a lot of choices. Whether it's an easy choice or a tough choice like Maggie talked about. And besides, it's hard to make the best choice for each, for these life choices.
Yes!
So in my opinion, just take it easy.
You know, at first I want to say, I have two statements. First, choices can be created. Choice is more than what we exactly need, the other one is, the name of choices is very important. Combine these two statements, not all choice is good for us, and we just only need to choose what exactly we require.
So for me, I just feel, you have to know yourself, and then choices become simple.
Yeah, agree. If you know what you want, what you exactly really want to buy, or choose, it is easier.
But the social concept will mix you up
What do you mean?
Oh, if everyone else wants something, if everyone else is buying it.
That's true! that does affect me..
Or if most people tell you, oh, you can't do that.
Yeah, we're going to talk about that next time, the Power of Default
Um, I agree with what Fanny just said, life is a process of making different choices. And I always thing that making your own choice is combined with responsiblity. You make your own choice, so that you will be responsible for the results of your own choice, there is no one you can blame. If you don't choose on your own, it's very likely that you will blame other people for the outcome. If it turns out to be a bad choice, then you don't want to take, you feel unhappy about it, then it's very likely for you to blame someone else.
So if you were the american people with the baby, you would prefer to be given the choice.
It's a cultural thing, It's the french culture for the doctor to make the decision, because it's their professional judgement. so this kind of decision will be on the doctors only, and everyone agrees on this point. But in the states...
But in taiwanese culture, what would be the case?
I think it's on the parents. But I don't know.
I want to have a choice that I choose or the doctor chooses.
Oh, you want to be able to choose to make the doctore decide. Because in the french case, I don't have a choice at all. I don' t like it.
It was made for you without consulting you.
I think in a medical case, you know we always consult doctors because we know so little about medical..
Not me. I don't like to consult doctors
I know not you!
Actually, it's not so complicated. If you face a choice about medication, actually it's easy. I mean, the choice is easy, but the making the choice is not easy. 1. save the life. 2. not save the life.
Oh, you mean, finding what the choices are is easy, but making the choice is not.
