Taking care of our own wants and focusing on what we want to do does not strike me as a solution to the problem of too much choice. It is precisely so that we can, each of us, focus on our own wants t...
Students work to get good grades even when they have no interest in their studies.
Our heightened individualism means that, not only do we expect perfection in all things, but we expect to produce this perfection ourselves.
Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.
If people err systematically and substantially in making those predictions, it’s likely that they will make some bad decisions—decisions that produce regret, even when events turn out well.
Ask yourself what is the point of advertising prescription drugs (antidepressant, anti-inflammatory, antiallergy, diet, ulcer—you name it) on prime-time television. We can’t just go to the drugstore a...
And once people are in the position to be able to work at any time from any place, they face decisions every minute of every day about whether or not to be working.
Hedonic lag. Lane says that there is a tendency of every culture to persist in valuing the qualities that made it distinctively great long after they have lost their hedonic yield. This, he says, expl...
Something as trivial as a little gift of candy to medical residents improves the speed and accuracy of their diagnoses. In general, positive emotion enables us to broaden our understanding of what con...
On the other hand, the more we think about opportunity costs, the less satisfaction we’ll derive from whatever we choose. So we should make an effort to limit how much we think about the attractive fe...
At present, the potential causal role that the availability of choice has in making people into maximizers is pure speculation. If the speculation is correct, we ought to find that in cultures in whic...
ANYTIME YOU MAKE A DECISION AND IT DOESN’T TURN OUT WELL or you find an alternative that would have turned out better, you’re a candidate for regret.
According to a survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners, a majority of people want more control over the details of their lives, but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives. There you h...
AS WE HAVE SEEN, REGRET WILL MAKE US FEEL WORSE AFTER DECISIONS—EVEN ones that work out—than we otherwise would, especially when we take opportunity costs into consideration.