Choice - An Acquired Ability

This is a continuation of the talk on Choice. Here's an interesting experiment on 'Choice' done with children, 7 to 9 year olds, in the US.

Half the children in the experiment were Anglo American and the other half were Asian American. The children were broken into three groups. Each group was brought into a room which had six piles of anagrams and markers in different colors. The first group was asked to choose whichever pile of anagrams they wanted and also whichever color marker they wanted to write their answers with. The second group was given a specific pile of anagrams and markers, and were told it was chosen for them by Ms Smith, the facilitator of the experiment. And the third group was also given specific anagrams and markers, except, they were told that they had been chosen by their mother. In fact the second and third groups were also given the same anagrams that the first group had chosen, just to make the results objective and comparable.

There were striking differences in how the groups performed . Essentially the same activity done by the children, but remarkable difference in output just by the way the exercise was presented to them.

The Anglo Americans did two and a half times more accurately when they chose the activity themselves, than when compared to when the activity was chosen for them. The tasks chosen by Ms.Smith and their mother yielded similar results. So, it didn’t matter who did the choosing, but if the task was dictated by another, their performance suffered.

In contrast, Asian Americans did best when they thought the activity was chosen by their mothers, second best when they chose for themselves, and least well when chosen by Ms.Smith.

The first generation Asian American children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents approach to choice. For them, choice was not a way of asserting individuality, but a way of creating community and harmony by deferring to the people who made their choices for them. If they had a concept of being true to oneself, that self most likely was composed not of an individual but of a collective. Success was about pleasing others more than about satisfying ones own preferences. 

Americans on the other hand, seem to thrive on choice. People who have grown up in this paradigm find it motivating to be able to choose. 

Americans tend to believe that they've reached some kind of pinnacle in the way they practice choice. They believe choice best fulfills an innate and universal desire of all humans. If a choice effects you, then you should be the one making the choice. The primary focal point of Choice is the Individual. Its called being true to yourself. 

People who have grown up in a culture that encourages choice believe that the more choices there are, the better the choice you make. While in other cultures, not as used to choice, it can actually provoke feelings like confusion, constraint, and even fear. Our ability to perceive differences in the options available is what leads to our ability of making choices. And to that extent its acquired. 

No matter where we're from, we all have a responsibility to open ourselves up to a wider array of what choice can do, and what it can represent. And this does not lead to a paralyzing moral relativism. Rather, it teaches us when and how to act. It brings us that much closer to realizing the full potential of choice, to inspiring the hope and achieving the freedom that choice promises but doesn't always deliver. If we learn to speak to one another, albeit through translation, then we can begin to see choice in all its strangeness, complexity and compelling beauty.