In her book The Art of Choos­ing, psy­chol­o­gist Sheena Iyen­gar—the exper­i­menter who con­ducted the orig­i­nal stud­ies lead­ing to the para­dox of choice the­ory—looks at the cul­tural dif­fer­ences in the def­i­n­i­tion and accep­tance of choice.

Take a mun­dane ques­tion: Do you choose to brush your teeth in the morn­ing? Or do you just do it? Can a habit or cus­tom be a choice? When Iyen­gar asked Japan­ese and Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dents in Kyoto to record all the choices they made in a day, the Amer­i­cans included things like brush­ing their teeth and hit­ting the snooze but­ton. The Japan­ese didn’t con­sider those actions to be choices. The two groups lived sim­i­lar lives. But they defined them differently.

In a review of the book, Iyen­gar is quoted as say­ing “the opti­mal amount of choice lies some­where in between infin­ity and very lit­tle, and that opti­mum depends on con­text and cul­ture”. I’ve posted before on how we may be over­es­ti­mat­ing the para­dox of choice the­ory.

via Mind Hacks