THE psychology of decision-making has become a crowded literary genre, though few have tackled it as engagingly as Sheena Iyengar. In The Art of Choosing she explores the biases and motivations that influence every choice we make, from which drink to buy to who to marry, and demonstrates that while choice may be important to people鈥檚 quality of life, too much of it can be disquieting.
What sets Iyengar鈥檚 book apart is her broad reach, with topics as varied as the secret of good improvisation in jazz and the disorientating effects of 鈥渓iberation鈥� on eastern Europeans. Disappointingly, she does not confront the deeper issue of whether we have any real control over our decision-making, as suggested by some neuroscience experiments that show many of our choices may be made unconsciously. Still, this would have distracted from one of Iyengar鈥檚 aims, which is to help her readers make better choices.
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