The Art of Choosing
Exploring the Challenges of Choice in Daily Life
Sheena Iyengar
S.T. Lee Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
Jim Wise Theater
A customer at an Apple store asks for the latest iPhone in black, but then suddenly changes his preference to white when he sees everyone else buying black. Although the child knows she shouldn't press the big red button, she finds her hand inching toward it. In some cultures, young men and women who decide to marry know that they will see each other in person for the first time on their wedding day. How did these people make their choices? How do any of us make vital and mundane choices?
In her Technology and Society Forum presentation, Sheena Iyengar will address these questions and suggest answers drawn from her discipline-spanning research. She will explore the complex relationship between choice and freedom, and why one doesn't always complement the other. Iyengar will explain how too much choice can overwhelm us, and how our choices are shaped by forces both obvious and subtle.
Iyengar is the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology, and research director at the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business. Iyengar’s primary research interest is how people perceive and respond to choice, research that has garnered honors which include the Best Dissertation Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in 1998 and the Presidential Early Career Award in 2002.
Popular media such as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Time magazines, the BBC and National Public Radio regularly cite Iyengar’s work. She recently presented her insights into the complexities of choices we make each day in her first book, The Art of Choosing.
Download the flyer (425 KB, pdf)
NJIT welcomed attendees from all area colleges, universities, and professions. This public forum qualified attendees for Professional Development Hours.
Sponsors:
Albert Dorman Honors College
NJIT Technology and Society Forum Committee
College of Science and Liberal Arts
School of Management
Murray Center for Women in Technology
Sigma Xi NJIT Chapter, and NJIT ASCE Chapter.
Additional support has been provided by Cengage Learning and LPL Financial.