What leads us astray is confusing more choices with more control. Because it is not clear that the more choices you have the more in control you feel. We have more choices than we've ever had before.

I mean we might even go to war as to whether we love Coke or Pepsi and our whole identity is wrapped up in that choice. You know, for the Russians they felt that these minor differences between these various sodas was just hyped up and irrelevant.

I think that too ended up affecting a lot of the different research questions that I later asked was really was about well to what extent... How do we balance choice as possibility and choice as limitations?

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

Are you going to be able to shave your legs? Are you going to be able to get married? So it was constantly thinking about both choice in terms of possibilities - I mean because choice is the thing that is supposed to enable you to be whatever it is you want to be - and yet, at the same time you have to think about choice in terms of its limitations.

Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant.

And guys will say looks matter, but they'll also say things like "Well, she should be smart and kind." And you know those are... so the typical responses and if you give them just a few options, like five or six, then they will rate them on the very characteristics that they said were really important to them.