The Art of Choosing, page 1
THE ART OF CHOOSING
SHEENA IYENGAR
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To Dad, who told me anything was possible
To Mom, for being there every step of the way
Past Is Prologue
Everything begins with a story.
—Joseph Campbell
I was born in Toronto, one month early and during a blizzard that covered the city in snow and silence. The surprise and the low-visibility conditions that accompanied my arrival were portents, though they went unrecognized at the time. My mother, as a recent immigrant from India, was of two worlds, and she would pass that multiple identity on to me. My father was making his way to Canada, but had not yet arrived; his absence at my birth was a sign of the deeper absence yet to come. Looking back, I see all the ways in which my life was set the moment I was born into it. Whether in the stars or in stone, whether by the hand of God or some unnameable force, it was already written, and every action of mine would serve to confirm the text.
That is one story. Here’s another.
You never know, do you? It’s a jack-in-the-box life: You open it carefully, one parcel at a time, but things keep springing up and out. That’s how I came into the world—suddenly—a month before I was due, my father not even able to receive me. He was still in India, where my mother had always imagined she, too, would be. Yet, somehow, she had ended up in Toronto with me in her arms, and through the window she could see the snow whirling. Like those flakes of ice, we were carried to other places: Flushing, Queens, and then Elmwood Park, New Jersey. I grew up in enclaves of Sikh immigrants, who—like my parents—had left India but had also brought it with them. And so I was raised in a country within a country, my parents trying to re-create the life that was familiar to them.
Three days a week, they took me to the gurudwara, or temple, where I sat on the right side with the women, while the men clustered on the left. In accordance with the articles of the Sikh faith, I kept my hair long and uncut, a symbol of the perfection of God’s creation. I wore a kara, a steel bracelet, on my right wrist as a symbol of my resilience and devotion, and as a reminder that whatever I did was done under the watchful eyes of God. At all times, even in the shower, I wore a kachchha, an undergarment that resembled boxers and represented control over sexual desire. These were just some of the rules I followed, as do all observant Sikhs, and whatever was not dictated by religion was decided by my parents. Ostensibly, this was for my own good, but life has a way of poking holes in your plans, or in the plans others make for you.
As a toddler, I constantly ran into things, and at first my parents thought I was just very clumsy. But surely a parking meter was a large enough obstacle to avoid? And why did I need to be warned so frequently to watch where I was going? When it became obvious that I was no ordinary klutz, I was taken to a vision specialist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. He quickly solved the mystery: I had a rare form of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disease of retinal degeneration, which had left me with 20/400 vision. By the time I reached high school, I was fully blind, able to perceive only light.
A surprise today does prepare us, I suppose, for the ones still in store. Coping with blindness must have made me more resilient. (Or was I able to cope well because of my innate resilience?) No matter how prepared we are, though, we can still have the wind knocked out of us. I was 13 when my father died. That morning, he dropped my mother off at work in Harlem and promised to see a doctor for the leg pain and breathing problems he’d been having. At the doctor’s office, however, there was some confusion about his appointment time, and no one could see him right then. Frustrated by this—and already stressed for other reasons—he stormed out of the office and pounded the pavement, until he collapsed in front of a bar. The bartender pulled him inside and called for an ambulance, and my father was eventually taken to the hospital, but he could not survive the multiple heart attacks he had suffered by the time he got there.
This is not to say that our lives are shaped solely by random and unpleasant events, but they do seem, for better or worse, to move forward along largely unmapped terrain. To what extent can you direct your own life when you can see only so far and the weather changes quicker than you can say “Surprise!”?
Wait. I have still another story for you. And though it is mine, once again, I suspect that this time you will see your own in it, too.
In 1971, my parents emigrated from India to America by way of Canada. Like so many before them, when they landed on the shores of this new country and a new life, they sought the American Dream. They soon found out that pursuing it entailed many hardships, but they persevered. I was born into the dream, and I think I understood it better than my parents did, for I was more fluent in American culture. In particular, I realized that the shining thing at its center—so bright you could see it even if you, like me, were blind—was choice.
My parents had chosen to come to this country, but they had also chosen to hold on to as much of India as possible. They lived among other Sikhs, followed closely the tenets of their religion, and taught me the value of obedience. What to eat, wear, study, and later on, where to work and whom to marry—I was to allow these to be determined by the rules of Sikhism and by my family’s wishes. But in public school I learned that it was not only natural but desirable that I should make my own decisions. It was not a matter of cultural background or personality or abilities; it was simply what was true and right. For a blind Sikh girl otherwise subject to so many restrictions, this was a very powerful idea. I could have thought of my life as already written, which would have been more in line with my parents’ views. Or I could have thought of it as a series of accidents beyond my control, which was one way to account for my blindness and my father’s death. However, it seemed much more promising to think of it in terms of choice, in terms of what was still possible and what I could make happen.
Many of us have conceived and told our stories only in the language of choice. It is certainly the lingua franca of America, and its use has risen rapidly in much of the rest of the world. We are more likely to recognize one another’s stories when we tell them in this language, and as I hope to show in this book, “speaking choice” has many benefits. But I also hope to reveal other ways in which we live and tell our lives and form narratives that are more complex and nuanced than the simplified alternatives of Destiny and Chance that I have presented here.
“Choice” can mean so many different things and its study approached in so many different ways that one book cannot contain its fullness. I aim to explore those aspects of it that I have found to be most thought-provoking and most relevant to how we live. This book is firmly grounded in psychology, but I draw on various fields and disciplines, including business, economics, biology, philosophy, cultural studies, public policy, and medicine. In doing so, I hope to present as many perspectives as possible and to challenge perceived notions about the role and practice of choice in our lives.
Each of the following seven chapters will look at choice from a different vantage point and tackle various questions about the way choice affects our lives. Why is choice powerful, and where does its power come from? Do we all choose in the same way? What is the relationship between how we choose and who we are? Why are we so often disappointed by our choices, and how do we make the most effective use of the tool of choice? How much control do we have over our everyday choices? How do we choose when our options are practically unlimited? Should we ever let others choose for us, and if yes, who and why? Whether or not you agree with my opinions, suggestions, and conclusions—and I’m sure we won’t always see eye to eye—just the process of exploring these questions can help you make more informed decisions. Choice, ranging from the trivial to the life-altering, in both its presence and its absence, is an inextricable part of our life stories. Sometimes we love it, Sometimes we hate it, but no matter what our relationship to choice, we can’t ignore it. As you read this book, I hope you’ll gain insight into how chioce has shaped your past, why it’s so important in the present, and where it can take you in the future.
What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.
—Archibald MacLeish,
Pulitzer Prize–winning American poet
CHAPTER ONE
The Call of the Wild
I. SURVIVORSHIP
What would you do? If you were stranded at sea in a small inflatable raft, or stuck in the mountains with a broken leg, or just generally up the proverbial creek without a paddle, what do you suppose you would do? How long, say, would you swim before letting yourself drown? How long could you hold out hope? We ask these questions—over dinner, at parties, on lazy Sunday afternoons—not because we’re looking for survival tips but because we’re fascinated by our limits and our ability to cope with the kinds of extreme conditions for which there is little preparation or precedent. Who among us, we want to know, would live to tell the tale?
Take Steven Callahan, for example. On February 5, 1982, some 800 miles west of the Canary Islands, his boat, the Napoleon Solo, capsized in a storm. Callahan, then 30, found himself alone and adrift in a leaky inflatable raft with few resources. He collected rainwater for drinking and fashioned a makeshift spear for fishing. He ate barnacles and sometimes the birds attracted to the remains of those barnacl
Callahan—an experienced mariner—possessed seafaring skills that were undoubtedly critical to his survival, but were these alone enough to save him? In his book Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, he describes his state of mind not long after the disaster:
About me lie the remnants of Solo. My equipment is properly secured, vital systems are functioning, and daily priorities are set, priorities not to be argued with. I somehow rise above mutinous apprehension, fear, and pain. I am captain of my tiny ship in treacherous waters. I escaped the confused turmoil following Solo’s loss, and I have finally gotten food and water. I have overcome almost certain death. I now have a choice: to pilot myself to a new life or to give up and watch myself die. I choose to kick as long as I can.
Callahan framed his situation, dire though it was, in terms of choice. A vast ocean stretched before him on all sides. He saw nothing but its endless blue surface, below which lurked many dangers. However, in the lapping of the waves and the whistle of the wind, he did not hear a verdict of death. Instead, he heard a question: “Do you want to live?” The ability to hear that question and to answer it in the affirmative—to reclaim for himself the choice that the circumstances seemed to have taken away—may be what enabled him to survive. Next time someone asks you, “What would you do?,” you might take a page from Callahan’s book and reply, “I would choose.”
Joe Simpson, another famous survivor, almost died during his descent from a mountain in the icy heights of the Peruvian Andes. After breaking his leg in a fall, he could barely walk, so his climbing partner, Simon Yates, attempted to lower him to safety using ropes. When Yates, who couldn’t see or hear Simpson, unwittingly lowered him over the edge of a cliff, Simpson could no longer steady himself against the face of the mountain or climb back up. Yates now had to support all of Simpson’s weight; sooner or later, he would no longer be able to do so, and both of them would plummet to their deaths. Finally, seeing no alternative, Yates cut the rope, believing he was sentencing his friend to death. What happened next was remarkable: Simpson fell onto a ledge in a crevasse, and over the next few days, he crawled five miles across a glacier, reaching base camp just as Yates was preparing to leave. In Touching the Void, his account of the incident, Simpson writes:
The desire to stop abseiling was almost unbearable. I had no idea what lay below me, and I was certain of only two things: Simon had gone and would not return. This meant that to stay on the ice bridge would finish me. There was no escape upwards, and the drop on the other side was nothing more than an invitation to end it all quickly. I had been tempted, but even in my despair I found that I didn’t have the courage for suicide. It would be a long time before cold and exhaustion overtook me on the ice bridge, and the idea of waiting alone and maddened for so long had forced me to this choice: abseil until I could find a way out, or die in the process. I would meet it rather than wait for it to come to me. There was no going back now, yet inside I was screaming to stop.
For the willful Callahan and Simpson, survival was a matter of choice. And as presented by Simpson, in particular, the choice was an imperative rather than an opportunity; you might squander the latter, but it’s almost impossible to resist the former.
Though most of us will never experience such extreme circumstances (we hope), we are nonetheless faced daily with our own imperatives to choose. Should we act or should we hang back and observe? Calmly accept whatever comes our way, or doggedly pursue the goals we have set for ourselves? We measure our lives using different markers: years, major events, achievements. We can also measure them by the choices we make, the sum total of which has brought us to wherever and whoever we are today. When we view life through this lens, it becomes clear that choice is an enormously powerful force, an essential determinant of how we live. But from where does the power of choice originate, and how best can we take advantage of it?
II. OF RATS AND MEN
In 1957 Curt Richter, a prolific psychobiology researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, conducted an experiment that you might find shocking. To study the effect of water temperature on endurance, Richter and his colleagues placed dozens of rats into glass jars—one rodent per jar—and then filled the jars with water. Because the walls of these jars were too high and slick to climb, the rats were left in a literal sink-or-swim situation. Richter even had water jets blasting from above to force the rats below the surface if they tried to float idly instead of swimming for their lives. He then measured how long the rats swam—without food, rest, or chance of escape—before they drowned.
The researchers were surprised to find that even when the water temperatures were identical, rats of equal fitness swam for markedly different lengths of time. Some continued swimming for an average of 60 hours before succumbing to exhaustion, while others sank almost immediately. It was as though, after struggling for 15 minutes, some rats simply gave up, while others were determined to push themselves to the utmost physical limit. The perplexed researchers wondered whether some rats were more convinced than others that if they continued to swim, they would eventually escape. Were rats even capable of having different “convictions”? But what else could account for such a significant disparity in performance, especially when the survival instinct of all the rats must have kicked in? Perhaps the rats that showed more resilience had somehow been given reason to expect escape from their terrible predicament.
So in the next round of the experiment, rather than throwing them into the water straightaway, researchers first picked up the rats several times, each time allowing them to wriggle free. After they had become accustomed to such handling, the rats were placed in the jars, blasted with water for several minutes, then removed and returned to their cages. This process was repeated multiple times. Finally, the rats were put into the jars for the sink-or-swim test. This time, none of the rats showed signs of giving up. They swam for an average of more than 60 hours before becoming exhausted and drowning.
We’re probably uncomfortable describing rats as having “beliefs,” but having previously wriggled away from their captors and having also survived blasts of water, they seemed to believe they could not only withstand unpleasant circumstances but break free of them. Their experience had taught them that they had some control over the outcome and, perhaps, that rescue was just around the corner. In their incredible persistence, they were not unlike Callahan and Simpson, so could we say that these rats made a choice? Did they choose to live, at least for as long as their bodies could hold out?
There’s a suffering that comes when persistence is unrewarded, and then there’s the heartbreak of possible rescue gone unrecognized. In 1965, at Cornell University, psychologist Martin Seligman launched a series of experiments that fundamentally changed the way we think about control. His research team began by leading mongrel dogs—around the same size as beagles or Welsh corgis—into a white cubicle, one by one, and suspending them in rubberized, cloth harnesses. Panels were placed on either side of each dog’s head, and a yoke between the panels—across the neck—held the head in place. Every dog was assigned a partner dog located in a different cubicle.
During the experiment each pair of dogs was periodically subjected to physically nondamaging yet painful electrical shocks, but there was a crucial difference between the two dogs’ cubicles: One could put an end to the shock simply by pressing the side panels with its head, while the other could not turn it off, no matter how it writhed. The shocks were synchronized, starting at the same moment for each dog in the pair, and ending for both when the dog with the ability to deactivate pressed the side panel. Thus, the amount of shock was identical for the pair, but one dog experienced the pain as controllable, while the other did not. The dogs that could do nothing to end the shocks on their own soon began to cower and whine, signs of anxiety and depression that continued even after the sessions were over. The dogs that could stop the shocks, however, showed some irritation but soon learned to anticipate the pain and avoid it by pressing their panels.
