JAD ABUMRAD: Today's show ...

ROBERT KRULWICH: You ever heard of this, Jad?

JAD: ... is about choice. 

JAD: I don't know what to expect.

ROBERT: I believe you are about to see your miracle.

JAD: And we thought we would start things off in a parking lot in sunny Berkeley, California, with a psychologist.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: I'm Barry Schwartz. I'm a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, where I have been teaching since 1971. The only job I ever applied for. So I think deep down in my past, I appreciated the value of simplifying one's options.

JAD: He even wrote a book about it called The Paradox of Choice. And to illustrate that paradox, he brought us to—well, you'll see.

JAD: Barry, will you give us a visual as to what we're doing?

BARRY SCHWARTZ: So we're about to walk into Berkeley's very famous Berkeley Bowl, which is a supermarket. Very unusual when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables.

JAD: Oh, wow.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: It has a selection unlike anything I've ever seen in my life.

ROBERT: Jad, could you describe your first view of the produce section?

JAD: I see just fields of oranges.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: So we've got navel orange. Valencia juice orange. Texas Valencia juice orange.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Organic navel orange. Minneola tangelos. Daisy tangerines.

ROBERT: Manzano bananas.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: We have large naval oranges.

ROBERT: Plantain bananas. Red bananas. Burro Saba bananas.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Large Gailans. Heirloom. Washington Pacific rose.

ROBERT: Hawaiian plantains.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Golden delicious fresh-O-licious. Morocco blood orange. Granny Smith. Georgia Vidalia.

ROBERT: Georgia Vidalia.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: And we have freedom of choice with respect to every ... 

BARRY SCHWARTZ: ... yellow onions. 

BARRY SCHWARTZ: ... And you see it in every area of life ...

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Pearl onions.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: ... in romantic relationships. 

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Georgia Vidalia. 

BARRY SCHWARTZ: When I was growing up, the answer to the question, "Should I get married," was obvious. The answer to the question, "When," was obvious.

JAD: Which was, "Of course."

BARRY SCHWARTZ: "Of course. And as soon as possible." Well, now there are no defaults. the low hanging fruit going to every imaginable lifestyle is available.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Hmm. Now we eat sweet yellow ...

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Every imaginable lifestyle is available.

JAD: You can be gay, straight, bi.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Exactly.

ROBERT: Oh, boy. Look at those seedless grapes.

JAD: Yeah. Seedless grapes. Oh, wait, wait. More apples.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: The sense that there are a million opportunities for you. You can make your own rules.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: I'm just overwhelmed. Overwhelmed!

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Counseling centers, psych services centers and universities are bursting at the seams. Why? These are the most privileged kids ever. The schools are giving them everything they could possibly want, and they're banging down the doors because they're so screwed up. Why? What's going on? An answer is: people don't know what to do. They don't know how to choose. They can't face a world in which everything is available.   And I see this in the college. It's—it's—it's heartbreaking to see these incredibly talented college seniors who we have given every opportunity to do whatever they want terrified at graduation. They know that this is a stage in life where walking through one door means they're gonna hear a lot of other doors slammed shut. They can't bear the thought that they may walk through the wrong door.

JAD: It's choice angst.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: It is. It's the disease of modernity.

JAD: This is very—what?

ROBERT: Sorry, sorry. Just, come on. Go—go ahead. Just do the show. But I say come on, in reservation.

JAD: What are you—why?

ROBERT: Why? Well, because, like, people from Swarthmore College get to pay, like, $45,000 a year for the privilege of—you know, that's a very, very rare slice of America.

JAD: Yeah, fine. You're right. You're right.

ROBERT: Thank you.

JAD: But, come on. You have this, too. I mean, how many speeds on your bike do you really need?

ROBERT: Well, that's a different thing. I mean, I don't need—I don't need 22 speeds. I happen to make do with five.

JAD: [laughs] There you go. So there are some real questions here. And on this hour, we're gonna look at choice.

ROBERT: Choice and decision making. When do we choose ...

JAD: How do we choose?

ROBERT: Where do we choose?

JAD: The limits of choose ...

ROBERT: The limits of choice.

JAD: Of choice. Of choose.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: The limits of choose.

ROBERT: The Limits of Choose on Radiolab.

JAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: And I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Stay with us, bitches.

JAD: Okay, to begin. Are you ready?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: So let me just ask the basic question. A basic question, which is, okay, so a lot of choice can be bad, but clearly we need some choice. So what's the right amount? Actually, how much can you really handle?

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: I asked that question to Barry Schwartz.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Well, there's a classic study in psychology from 50 years ago called the Magic Number Seven.

JONAH LEHRER: The magical number seven plus or minus two.

JAD: That's Jonah Lehrer, author of the book Proust Was a Neuroscientist and a new book called How We Decide. In the '50s, he says ...

JONAH LEHRER: I think, like 1956 ...

JAD: ... a guy named George Miller wondered about this: How much can a human brain really hold? So he conducted a series of memory tests, asked people to memorize different sets of numbers, letters, musical notes. And what Miller found out is that the average human ...

JONAH LEHRER: ... could hold about seven digits, plus or minus two at any given moment in working memory.

JAD: When you say working memory, you mean like—like, what we can keep in our top of mind memory, right? Not like memory, memory, but doing like RAM. 

JONAH LEHRER: Exactly. Random digits. You can hold about seven plus or minus two. And with practice, people can—can, you know, really bump it up a bit.

JAD: With practice, Robert. With practice.

ROBERT: I'm still struggling with six, six, six, six, six, six, six. And I think to myself, I think I got the first four.

JONAH LEHRER: I mean, it's not an accident that—that so many of these random digits we have to memorize from phone numbers to Social Security numbers are seven plus or minus two.

JAD: Now the interesting thing is what happens to our decision making powers when you try and get more than seven in your head.

ROBERT: Mmm. What?

BABA SHIV: You want me to shut the door?

PRODUCER: Yeah. Do it. Wonderful.

JAD: Well, let me introduce you to someone.

BABA SHIV: I'm Baba Shiv. I'm a professor here at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Marketing. A lot of my research has to do with the brain.

JAD: And tricking people.

BABA SHIV: Oh, yeah, absolutely. [laughs]

JAD: So, Robert, I want to tell you about one particular experiment that he did.

ROBERT: Okay.

BABA SHIV: So the experiment is pretty straightforward.

JAD: Goes like this. He got a bunch of subjects together. He said, "Okay, I'm going to give you all a number ..."

BABA SHIV: It's going to be a number.

JAD: "... on a little card. You're going to read the number. And I want you to commit that number to memory."

BABA SHIV: Take as much time as you want to memorize the number.

JAD: And then he says ...

BABA SHIV: You're now going to walk to the next room and recall the number. And that's what subjects think, that subjects think that they're going to be doing.

JAD: So they—they know they're going to be in one place, getting a number of going to another place and reciting that number.

BABA SHIV: That's right.

JAD: That's all they know.

BABA SHIV: That's all they know.

JAD: What they don't know, is it that not everybody is getting the same kind of number.

BABA SHIV: Some people get a seven digit number. Some people get a two digit number.

ROBERT: That I can do, by the way, I think I can do two digits.

JAD: No, I doubt it. All the subjects have to do is they've got to memorize a number, walk out of room one down the hall to room two, then recite their number. Now just imagine, you with me? 

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Person with the two digit number in their head who is walking out of room one.

SUBJECT #1: One, two is my number, I can definitely remember this.

JAD: Down the hall. At the same time, someone with seven digits in their head walks down the hall. Now, here's where the trickery comes in as they're walking down the hall, mid-memorizing all of a sudden ...

WOMAN: Excuse me.

JAD: ... they pass a lady in the hallway and she's holding something.

WOMAN: Sorry—sorry to interrupt you. But would you like a snack?

JAD: She says, here, have a—have a snack. Just as I as—as our way of saying thanks for participating in the study. You can have one of two snacks. You choose.

WOMAN: You can choose between either A) a big fat slice of chocolate cake, or, B) a nice bowl of fruit salad.

JAD: Meanwhile, they've both got these numbers still in their head. Now here's the weird thing. When they finally make their choice ...

WOMAN: What would you like, some yummy cake or some healthy fruit?

JAD: The people, this is crazy, the people with two digits in their head ...

SUBJECT #1: You know, I love cake, but I think I'll take the fruit.

JAD: ... almost always choose the fruit. Whereas the people with seven digits in their head almost always choose the cake.

SUBJECT #2: You know what, I—the cake. I want the cake.

JAD: And we're talking by huge margins here.

BABA SHIV: It was significant. I mean, this was like in some cases a 20, 25, 30-point difference.

ROBERT: Huh. So what, the ...

JAD: Meaning if you have seven digits in your head, you are twice as likely to choose cake than fruit. Twice!

ROBERT: So let's get on with this. So the people with the seven, they just get the cake. I get that part. I don't know why.

JAD: Exact—that doesn't interest you, as to why they would choose ...

ROBERT: Well, a little, yeah. Why?

JAD: Okay, good. Now that I've got your interest, I'll tell you the theory.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: Okay. And this is where it gets interesting. It seems that the brain is anatomically organized into different systems.

JONAH LEHRER: Dual systems is what they're called.

JAD: According to Jonah. You have a rational, deliberative system, which is sort of more to the front of the brain. And then deeper in the brain, you have an emotional, unconscious system.

And according to Jonah, these two systems are often at war.

JONAH: I mean, there's—there's constant competition between the rational brain and the emotional brain. They're always competing for attention and to guide and direct your behavior.

JAD: Especially when you have a tough choice like Baba Shiv's cake versus fruit. There, the competition is fierce.

BABA SHIV: The emotional automatic system is pushing them towards the cake.

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: Take, bake the cake.

JONAH LEHRER: The emotional brain ...

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: Yummy.

JONAH LEHRER: ... loves sweet gooey chocolate cake.

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: Look at that frosting.

JONAH LEHRER: That's really what you want.

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: Me need chocolate, now!

JAD: On the other hand ... 

BABA SHIV: The deliberative system, on the other hand, comes and says, "wait a second ..."

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: Are you thinking about this choice carefully?

BABA SHIV: "This probably is not good for you because ..."

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: ... calories, sugar, high fat content.

JONAH LEHRER: Think about your waistline.

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: It's going to make you chubby.

JONAH LEHRER: Think about your cholesterol.

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: It is not good for your health. It is not good for your self-esteem.

BABA SHIV: And that acts as a check.

JAD: But, if you give that rational, deliberative system seven numbers to—seven numbers, just seven to memorize ...

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: One, two, two, eight, nine, three, six.

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: Cake.

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: One, two—no. Shh! One, two, two, eight, five ...

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: Eat cake. [laughs] Take it.

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: One, two, two—shh! One ...

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: So delicious.

DELIBERATIVE SYSTEM: Eat—cholest—one ...

JAD: Suddenly the rational brain has too much to keep track of.

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM: Oh, you know, you want to.

JAD: It's getting tired. It can't put up as much of a fight.

BABA SHIV: Which means greater likelihood that the emotions will drive their choices.

JAD: The astounding thing here, says Jonah, is not simply that sometimes emotion wins over reason, it's how easily it wins. Seven numbers is all it takes to screw up reason.

JONAH LEHRER: Just—just think about how astonishingly limited that is.

JAD: Yeah. I mean, compared to emotion, team reason is, well ...

JONAH LEHRER: Pretty feeble and there's no way around it. And we can kind of rage against the machine, but the brute fact is it's just one microchip in a big computer. And when we always rely on it all the advice you get in decision making is, "Stop and think, slow down, take your time." And yet when you actually look at the brain, that can lead you to rely on a feeble piece of machinery.

JAD: All right. Let me just offer an admittedly inconsequential case in point. There we were at the Berkeley Bowl. In the apple aisle. There were thousands and thousands of apples to choose from. Okay, not thousands, but a lot. And Robert and I get it in our heads, we're going to choose—let's each choose an apple. And Robert ...

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: ... being Robert, decides like in six seconds.

ROBERT: Because it had this really cool name.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Washington Pacific rose. Za…

ROBERT: Zazz. I'm gonna get a zazz. [laughs]

JAD: Me, I deliberated.

JAD: I'm gonna get the—maybe I should—let's just go to the organic.

PRODUCER: We're—we're running out of time.

JAD: I lined up about 12 apples, compared them by price, size, color and everything I could think of and eventually decided on a giant Korean apple pear, which was the only logical choice because it was bigger than his.

JAD: This is a—this is a nine pound apple.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: It is large.

JAD: It was more expensive.

JAD: $2.89.

PRODUCER: Check.

JAD: Definitely way more original.

ROBERT: But this isn't an apple. It's a—it's a ...

PRODUCER: Check.

JAD: And I figure as we're checking out.

CASHIER: Paper bag or a plastic?

JAD: Paper, please.

JAD: Game over, I am the winner. But a couple hours later we get to the airport. We have some time before our flight. I grab a plastic knife, we cut the apples and we do a tasting test.

ROBERT: Okay, ready? Here we go.

JAD: One, two, three.

JAD: And guess who's apple is the best?

JONAH LEHRER: I'm guessing the Zazz apple.

ROBERT: Oh, this is a much better apple.

JAD: Yes!

ROBERT: Oh, so good.

JAD: The apple wins in almost every department.

JAD: My apple? I don't even want to talk about my apple.

JAD: This doesn't taste like an apple at all.

ROBERT: Ooh! It has a surprise. Is that a worm?

JAD: That's a gigantic core.

ROBERT: Is that a core or is it an animal living there?

JAD: Anyhow, according to Jonah, where I went wrong ...

JONAH LEHRER: Oh, you've just completely—you've short circuited your prefrontal cortex there.

JAD: The prefrontal cortex is the—right here in your forehead, and that's where the rational brain lives. And I had given it too many things to keep track of ...

JONAH LEHRER: All these apples. You can only hold so much data at once, you know, any given moment. So you can fixate on seven apples, but only one piece of information for each apple, how red they are or how shiny they are.

JAD: So you can't do seven apples with seven variables because then you've got 49. That's way past what ...

JONAH LEHRER: Exactly.

JAD: But there is a bigger problem than brain fatigue, if you ask Barry Schwartz. And it happens after you choose.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: You're plagued with the possibility that you didn't do as well as you could have.

JAD: I'm—I'm—I'm ...

JAD: Regret.

JAD: I'm lamenting what could have been.

JAD: Which I definitely felt at the airport.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: And chances are you didn't do as well as you could have.

JAD: Well that's—therein lies the rub of a place like Berkeley Bowl. You get seduced by an 11-pound apple that turns out to be a fake watermelon with an anus.

ROBERT: [laughs]

ROBERT: All right. So we now understand the problem that Barry proposes. He says that if you have to make a choice, too often the choice is the wrong one because your brain is too full of fat.

JAD: It hurts your head.

ROBERT: It hurts your head, or because if you make the choice, you then think, "Oh, damn, I should have chosen otherwise." The regret problem.

JAD: Right.

ROBERT: There are ways to handle this. Our friend Oliver Sacks, Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neuroscientist, who is a regular on this program, we were talking and I told him about this issue and he said, "Oh, I don't have the problem." "What do you mean, you don't have the problem?" "Well, I make," he says, "a willful choice, that certain things I care about a lot and I worry over and then, oh, there's a whole swath of my life that I just don't choose."

OLIVER SACKS: Yes. My housekeeper actually comes tomorrow and she will get half a gallon of soy milk, half a gallon of prune juice. She will make a gallon or so of orange Jell-O. She will make a large bowl of tabbouleh. She will get six or seven tins of sardines because I eat sardines with tabbouleh every evening she will get seven apples and seven oranges.

ROBERT: Seven apples? Why seven apples and seven ...

OLIVER SACKS: Okay, well, because I'm also very greedy and impulsive, and therefore I have to have a rule that I am permitted to eat an apple a day and a pear a day. If I had 70 apples, I would—I would—I would eat them all.

ROBERT: So you have worked it out so that you are regulating yourself and somehow your appetite has become regulated in the meantime?

OLIVER SACKS: Yes. I never get bored with my food.

ROBERT: Why not? That seems so boring.

OLIVER SACKS: Well, it—I don't find it boring. I enjoy it equally and with equal relish every time.

ROBERT: If I were to sit down with you and describe to you a new candy, I don't know, almond M&Ms, and I would do it with all the talent that I could possibly bring to description. So you would see the nice outer candy shell. It would glisten, it would be sugary, it would have this most delicious nut inside. Would you not feel at all tempted to break the habit of years, whatever your sweet is, and just venture over to almond M&Ms?

OLIVER SACKS: And I would certainly try the almond M&M, but since you mention it with chocolate, there is a shop close to me which has broken 72 percent chocolate. I go there each day. Indeed I have, as you see with me, a single dollar in my pocket. I put it down and I say "A dollar's worth of 72."

ROBERT: Every day?

OLIVER SACKS: Every day, neither more nor less.

ROBERT: Can you recall the moment when you somehow leaped from whatever your predecessor chocolate routine was to the 72 percent cocoa content? Something wonderful must have happened on that day where you got yanked from the deep rut that you were in into the next deep rut. I'm just curious what happened on the day of change?

OLIVER SACKS: I don't—I don't clearly recollect, but I can tell you a day of negative change. This again goes back to my carnivorous days when I got a thing about kidneys. For some reason ...

ROBERT: You mean the organ or the pea?

OLIVER SACKS: No, no, the organ. Rognon. Rognon. It was when I was a resident at UCLA. And I, as I now have, sardines every time for dinner. At that time, living in Topanga Canyon, I would have kidneys and I would go to the farmer's market and I would buy my weekly kidneys. But on one occasion, a strange mistake happened. Whether I made the mistake or whether I was misheard, by all, instead of my usual two pounds of kidneys, I was given 22 pounds of kidneys.

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS: And if a mistake is made, I'm too shy to say anything.

ROBERT: Aren't you embarrassed to be such a wimp? Both of routine and of shyness? I mean, I think it's a double—it's a double duty there.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes, I am. Well, what the hell? Anyhow, with these I should, of course, have thrown away this monstrous palpitating bag of kidneys.

ROBERT: [laughs]

OLIVER SACKS:  But anyway, I took it back to my little house in Topanga and then followed an increasingly nightmarish period in which I had kidneys for breakfast, for lunch, kidneys stewed, sweet kidneys. And finally, after about 10 days, by which time I'd seen about 50, an uncontrollable nausea and vomiting took hold of me.

ROBERT: Literally, or just of the mind?

OLIVER SACKS: I think it was literally as well because I remember seeing bits of kidney in the vomit, and I then threw out the rest of the kidneys. And I never had a kidney since.

ROBERT: Oliver Sacks, author of most recently the book Musicophilia.

JAD: Hey, what did he call those kidneys just now?

ROBERT: Rognon.

JAD: Oh, what is that?

ROBERT: That's French for kidney.

JAD: Really?

ROBERT: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JAD: No kidding. What's French for let's go to break?

ROBERT: Au revoir. Au revoir.

JAD: Well, no, but that's—that's goodbye for good.

ROBERT: Meaning, we'll be right back.

JAD: Okay. Coming up, we have a story you will not believe about what happens behind the scenes at a casino when you are trying not to lose, but nonetheless are getting gouged. That's coming up on Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Stay with us.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Message one.]

[BARRY SCHWARTZ: Hi, this is Barry Schwartz. Radiolab is funded in part by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Science Foundation. Radiolab is produced by WNYC and distributed by National Public Radio. Bye.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

 

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