THE psychology of decision-making has become a crowded literary genre, though few have tackled it as engagingly as Sheena Iyengar. In The Art of Choosing she explores the biases and motivations that influence every choice we make, from which drink to buy to who to marry, and demonstrates that while choice may be important to people’s quality of life, too much of it can be disquieting.
What sets Iyengar’s book apart is her broad reach, with topics as varied as the secret of good improvisation in jazz and the disorientating effects of “liberation” on eastern Europeans. Disappointingly, she does not confront the deeper issue of whether…
