You know give me choices that are truly different from one another, otherwise they don't regard them as meaningful choices.

This is at a time when you know most of us drank tap water, so I used to go to this store and examine all the varieties and we used to marvel at all the choices out there, but I found that I rarely bought anything and I kind of thought that was kind of curious. I mean, they had things that the other grocery stores didn't have and yet I never bought anything.

Now to what...? How we teach people to make choices and the things they're going to make choices over - that is culturally learned.

I've done a number of studies with speed dating and Match.com and what's interesting is that you know we still walk into a speed dating event, you know, thinking about what it is we're looking for in a mate and so you ask people, like women will say "I'm looking for somebody who is really kind and sincere and smart and funny."

What you see determines how you interpret the world, which in turn influences what you expect of the world and how you expect the story of your life to unfold.

[Americans] think that choice, as seen through the American lens, best fulfills an innate and universal desire for choice in all humans. Unfortunately, these beliefs are based on assumptions that don't always hold true in many countries, in many cultures.

In reality, many choices are between things that are not that much different. The value of choice depends on our ability to perceive differences between the options.