Choice

In contrast to biological psychology, I chose to look at the power of choice through the lens of environment.  In the attached link, I watched a presentation done by Sheena Lyngar over the power of choice.  Lyngar broke down common paradigms about how we as Americans make choices compared to that of other cultures.  In the 4-7 minutes of the presentation, Lyngar related a case study in which she took American six year olds and Asian-American six year olds and administered a test on choice.  The children were divided into three groups, group one was taken into a room and given many different anagram puzzles and markers that they could choose to use.  The second group came after and was assigned puzzles and a marker to use, while the third group was told that their mothers had chosen for them.  What Lyngar found was that American children that had free choice of what they used did two and a half times more anagrams compared to the other two options.  In contrast, the Asian-American children did two and a half times more anagrams when told that their mothers had picked their materials for them.  What this shows is that the way we are raised, our environment, has a significant role in how and why we choose what we do.  It would be extremely interesting to test the decisions we make in other areas of our life such as marriage, career, etc; but regardless, I think it is clear that our environment is a prominent influencer of our decisions, maybe even more so than our biology.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html