Sheena Iyengar
![Sheena Iyengar](/assets/img/authors/sheena-iyengar.jpg)
Sheena Iyengar
Sheena S. Iyengaris the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School. She is one of the world's experts on choice. Her research focuses on: why people want choice, what affects how and what we choose, and how we can improve our decision-making outcomes...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth29 November 1969
CountryUnited States of America
numbers people decision
When people are given a moderate number of options (4 to 6) rather than a large number (20 to 30), they are more likely to make a choice, are more confident in their decisions, and are happier with what they choose.
russia people giving
When I was in Russia I found that I thought I was going to give these people that I was interviewing a whole bunch of choice in terms of what they could drink while we were chatting.
today walmart typical
The typical Walmart today offers you 100,000 products.
track people looks
we began to look at "Why is that?" And a large part of that has to do with the fact that when people have a lot of options to choose from they don't know how to tell them apart. They don't know how to keep track of them.
kindness important said
You know if they said kindness or funniness was really most important to them then they will be more likely to say yes to the person that they thought was kind and funny.
vacation ice three
You know, or three kinds of ice cream bars and you'd see this and like this... okay they could clearly benefit from some more choices and I remember having these discussions with the Japanese because they you know they often like to go to Hawaii for vacation because it was definitely much cheaper for them and I would ask them, "So when you go to Hawaii, you know do eat all these other things?"
track choices fundamentals
Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant.
japan people choices
People don't put as much of an emphasis in expanding their choices, so that, you know, one of the things that I learned when I was in Japan way back in the 1990's and there were all these quarrels happening between the U.S. and Japan about allowing more American products into the Japanese market.
bohemian choosing express furniture home infer instead people saying supposed trying
When you're choosing furniture for your home that's supposed to express who you are, what you are also saying is you want other people to infer what you want them to infer. What if they see something different? Wouldn't it be really depressing if you're trying to be bohemian and instead they see you as Rush Limbaugh?
When I was very young, my background as a Sikh-American made me aware of the tensions that underlie choice.
age choose clearest example fund good less likely options presence retirement save
There are times when the presence of more choices can make us choose things that are not good for us. For me the clearest example is that the more retirement fund options a person has, the less likely they are to save for their old age.
based believer great
I'm a great believer in the idea of not choosing based on our taste.