Name: TED 中英雙語字幕: 希娜 艾因嘉：選擇的藝術
Uploaded: 2025-04-16T13:19:53.000Z
Duration: 24 min 6 s
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Translators note Today I'm going to take you around the world in 18 minutes.

My base of operations is in the US, but let's start at the other end of the map, in Kyoto, Japan, where I was living with a Japanese family while I was doing part of my dissertational research 15 years ago.

I knew even then that I would encounter cultural differences and misunderstandings, but they popped up when I least expected it.

On my first day, I went to a restaurant and I ordered a cup of green tea with sugar.

After a pause, the waiter said, One does not put sugar in green tea.

I know, I said, I'm aware of this custom, but I really like my tea sweet.

In response, he gave me an even more courteous version of the same explanation.

I understand, I said, that the Japanese do not put sugar in their green tea, but I'd like to put some sugar in my green tea.

Surprised by my insistence, the waiter had to took up the issue with the manager.

Pretty soon, a lengthy discussion ensued and finally the manager came over to me and said, I am very sorry, we do not have sugar.

Well, since I couldn't have my tea the way I wanted it, I ordered a cup of coffee, which the waiter brought over promptly.

Resting on the saucer were two packets of sugar.

My failure to procure myself a cup of sweet green tea was not due to a simple misunderstanding.

This was due to a fundamental difference in our ideas about choice.

From my American perspective, when a paying customer makes a reasonable request based on her preferences, she has every right to have that request met.

The American way to quote Burger King is to have it your way because as Starbucks says, happiness is in your choices.

But from the Japanese perspective, it's their duty to protect those who don't know any better.

In this case, the ignorant gaijin for making the wrong choice.

Let's face it, the way I wanted my tea was inappropriate according to cultural standards and they were doing their best to help me save face.

Americans tend to believe that they've reached some sort of pinnacle in the way they practice choice.

They think that choice is 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.

At times, they don't even hold true at America's own borders.

I'd like to discuss some of these assumptions and the problems associated with them.

As I do so, I hope you'll start thinking about some of your own assumptions and how they were shaped by your backgrounds.

First assumption, if a choice affects you, then you should be the one to make it.

This is the only way to ensure that your preferences and interests will be most fully accounted for.

In America, the primary locus of choice is the individual.

People must choose for themselves, sometimes sticking to their guns regardless of what other people want or recommend.

But do all individuals benefit from taking such an approach to choice?

Mark Lipper and I did a series of studies in which we sought the answer to this very question.

In one study, which we ran in Japantown, San Francisco, we brought seven to nine-year-old Anglo and Asian-American children into the laboratory and we divided them up into three groups.

The first group came in and they were greeted by Miss Smith, who showed them six big piles of anagram puzzles.

The kids got to choose which pile of anagrams they would like to do and they even got to choose which marker they would write their answers with.

When the second group of children came in, they were brought to the same room, shown the same anagrams, but this time Miss Smith told them which anagrams to do and which markers to write their answers with.

Now when the third group came in, they were told that their anagrams and their markers had been chosen by their mothers.

In reality, the kids who were told what to do, whether by Miss Smith or their mothers, were actually given the very same activity which their counterparts in the first group had freely chosen.

With this procedure, we were able to ensure that the kids across the three groups all did the same activity, making it easier for us to compare performance.

Such small differences in the way we administered the activity yielded striking differences in how well they performed.

Anglo-Americans, they did two and a half times more anagrams when they got to choose them as compared to when it was chosen for them by Miss Smith or their mothers.

If the task was dictated by another, their performance suffered.

In fact, some of the kids were visibly embarrassed when they were told that their mothers had been consulted.

One girl named Mary said, you asked my mother?

In contrast, Asian-American children performed best when they believed their mothers had made the choice.

Second best when they chose for themselves and least well when it had been chosen by Miss Smith.

A girl named Natsumi even approached Miss Smith as she was leaving the room and tugged on her skirt and asked, could you please tell my mommy I did it just like she said?

The first generation children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents' approach to choice.

For them, choice was not just a way of defining and asserting their individuality, but a way to create community and harmony by deferring to the choices of people whom they trust it and respect it.

If they had a concept of being true to oneself, then that self most likely composed not of an individual, but of a collective.

Success was just as much about pleasing key figures as it was about satisfying one's own preferences.

Or you could say that the individual's preferences were shaped by the preferences of specific others.

The assumption then that we do best when the individual self chooses only holds when that self is clearly divided from others.

When in contrast two or more individuals see their choices and their outcomes as intimately connected, then they may amplify one another's success by turning choosing into a collective act.

To insist that they choose independently might actually compromise both their performance and their relationships.

Yet that is exactly what the American paradigm demands.

It leaves little room for interdependence or an acknowledgment of individual fallibility.

It requires that everyone treat choice as a private and self-defining act.

People that have grown up in such a paradigm might find it motivating, but it is a mistake to assume that everyone thrives under the pressure of choosing alone.

The second assumption which informs the American view of choice goes something like this.

The more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice.

So bring it on Walmart with a hundred thousand different products and Amazon with 27 million bucks and Match.com with, what is it, 15 million date possibilities now?

Let's test this assumption by heading over to Eastern Europe.

Here I interviewed people who were residents of formerly communist countries who had all faced the challenge of transitioning to a more democratic and capitalistic society.

One of the most interesting revelations came not from an answer to a question, but from a simple gesture of hospitality.

When the participants arrived for their interview, I offered them a set of drinks.

Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, seven to be exact.

During the very first session, which was run in Russia, one of the participants made a comment that really caught me off guard.

I was so struck by this comment that from then on I started to offer all the participants those seven sodas, and I asked them, how many choices are these?

Again and again, they perceived these seven different sodas not as seven choices, but as one choice, soda or no soda.

When I put out juice and water in addition to these seven sodas, now they perceived it as only three choices, juice, water, and soda.

Compare this to the diehard devotion of many Americans, not just to a particular flavor of soda, but to a particular brand.

You know, research shows repeatedly that we can't actually tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.

Of course, you and I know that Coke is the better choice.

For modern Americans who are exposed to more options and more ads associated with options than anyone else in the world, choice is just as much about who they are as it is about what the product is.

Combine this with the assumption that more choices are always better, and you have a group of people for whom every little difference matters, and so every choice matters.

But for Eastern Europeans, the sudden availability of all these consumer products on the marketplace was a deluge.

They were flooded with choice before they could protest that they didn't know how to swim.

When asked, what words and images do you associate with choice, Gregors from Warsaw said, Ah, for me it is fear.

Boden from Kiev said, in response to how he felt about the new consumer marketplace, It is too much.

A sociologist from the Warsaw Survey Agency explained, The older generation jumped from nothing to choice all around them.

They were never given a chance to learn how to react.

And Tomasz, a young Polish man, said, I do not need 20 kinds of chewing gum.

I don't mean to say that I want no choice, but many of these choices are quite artificial.

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.

Americans train their whole lives to play spot the difference.

They practice this from such an early age that they've come to believe that everyone must be born with this ability.

In fact, though all humans share a basic need and desire for choice, we don't all see choice in the same places or to the same extent.

When someone can't see how one choice is unlike another, or when there are too many choices to compare and contrast, the process of choosing can be confusing and frustrating.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

TED 中英雙語字幕: 希娜艾因嘉：選擇的藝術

perspective

perceive

individual

practice

TED 中英雙語字幕: 希娜 艾因嘉：選擇的藝術

perspective

perceive

individual

practice

TED 中英雙語字幕: 希娜艾因嘉：選擇的藝術