Choices, Choices, Choices...

Much to my dad’s dismay, Northern Tissue introduced colored toilet paper in 1954. My dad, who owned a small grocery store at the time, already allotted much shelf space to white paper products from several companies - toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, plates, cups and napkins. With the addition of toilet paper in yellow, blue, green, peach and lavender, he faced the daunting prospect of at least doubling his paper display. He did not like these choices for his customers or himself.

The trend to match paper items with a bathroom’s decor did not last too long, but long enough to give the small grocery store owners like my dad headaches. People soon tired of this decorator trend, environmentalists warmed about the dyes endangering water supplies and doctors treated rashes and more serious skin problems caused by the dyes.

My dad’s complaints came rushing back to mind as I listened to psychologist and author Sheena Iyengar and law professor and author Kent Greenfield discuss on TV the fixation of Americans on choice. Of course, we want to choose our paper products, our mates, our books, our food, our politicians. We take pride in our differing opinions about everything. It may not be listed in the Bill of Rights, but we Americans claim choice as our right. Which fast food chain came up with the slogan, “Have it your way”?

Iyengar is best known for a famous jam experiment. At a luxury grocery store, she set up a table offering samples of jam. Sometimes, there were six flavors, excluding strawberry; at other times, 24, also excluding that favorite berry flavor. Shoppers were more likely to stop at the display with the most flavors. But after the taste test, those who chose from the smaller number of samples were ten times more likely to buy jam than those who stopped at a larger display; 30 percent versus three percent. According to this experiment, repeated numerous times, Iyengar says that having too many options makes it harder to settle on a single selection.

In her book, The Art of Choosing, Iyengar also reports that different cultures regard choice from different perspectives. She conducted a study with elementary school children where half the population was Anglo American and half were children of Japanese or Chinese immigrants. The two ethnic groups reacted differently. The Anglos did best when they could choose their own puzzle to solve and the color of their marker to use. The children of immigrants did best on those assignments supposedly authorized by their mothers. Both groups did poorest on the assignments dictated by a stranger.

Iyengar says that while human beings are born to choose, they want their choice to have meaning. She writes, “Science can assist us in becoming more skillful choosers, but at its core, choice remains an art.”

Greenfield, author of The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits, questions whether or not our choices are more constrained and limited than we think.

Greenfield tells Ron Charles of The Washington Post, “We like to have all these options, but we don’t take advantage of them. There are 45,000 different items in a typical grocery store, but most people buy the same things over and over. When my wife and I were redoing our kitchen, we went to choose paint colors, and it was paralyzing.”

The Oregonian also explores Greenfield’s concept about limited choice. “Greenfield makes a compelling case that protecting people from bad choices can be good for them -- and for us. We set speed limits at 55 mph, for example, and prohibit adults from having sex with 6-year-olds. We require motorcycle riders to wear helmets because a decision not to do so is costly -- since our values do not allow us to leave injured people at the side of the road, even when their behavior caused their injuries.”

Greenfield goes on to address a number of issues regarding personal responsibility versus society intervention. He writes, “Obesity is a great example. If you think that the number-one cause of obesity is people’s own bad decisions, then there isn’t much of a public-policy implication other than to educate people about making better choices. However, if you think that obesity is the result of a wide range of factors, one of which of course is people’s bad decisions, but which also includes the fact that it’s cheaper to buy unhealthy foods because of a whole series of government subsidies to the corn, sugar, and meat industries, then there are much more significant public policies that we could undertake as a society to help address the problem.

“Safety is another factor in this discussion. We subsidize public works like a city-park system, and here in Boston, every summer there are a bunch of kids who get shot in public parks because they were in the wrong place the wrong time. So parents who live in areas where crime and violence is higher don’t let their kids play outside and they keep them at home in front of the TV instead, which is directly correlated with obesity. So if obesity is viewed as a cultural problem and a social phenomenon, not just as the product of the bad choices of many separate individuals, then we’re much more likely to be able to use social policy to help enact change.”

When we can blame others for their own problems, we don’t have to care. If we see ourselves as part of the problem and/or the solution, our choices become more difficult. Perhaps Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations says it best. “To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”

May our choices be wise in the new year.

2013