Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar
Born	November 29, 1969 (1969-11-29)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Stanford University University of Pennsylvania
Occupation	S.T. Lee Professor of Business and Research Director at the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business
Employer	Columbia Business School
Known for	academic research on choice

Sheena Iyengar (born 1969) is the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School and the Research Director at the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business. She is known for her research on choice.

Biography

Sheena Iyengar was born in Toronto, Canada in 1969. Her parents had emigrated there from Delhi, India. In 1972, Iyengar’s family moved to Flushing, Queens, where her father helped establish the first permanent Sikh temple; and in 1979, the family moved to Elmwood Park, New Jersey. Iyengar grew up in a bicultural environment, observing the tenets of Sikhism with her family but partaking in American culture outside of the home.

When Iyengar was three years old, she was diagnosed with a rare form of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disease of retinal degeneration. By 6th grade, Iyengar had lost the ability to read, and by 11th grade, she had lost her sight entirely and could only perceive light. Iyengar’s life had also taken another turn in high school; when she was 13, her father died of a heart attack.

In Iyengar’s book, The Art of Choosing, she explains how these seemingly random events and external influences, which shaped her life, led her to become interested in choice:

"My parents had chosen to come to this country, but they had also chosen to hold on to as much of India as possible. They lived among other Sikhs, followed closely the tenets of their religion, and taught me the value of obedience. What to eat, wear, study, and later on, where to work and whom to marry—I was to allow these to be determined by the rules of Sikhism and by my family’s wishes. But in public school I learned that it was not only natural but desirable that I should make my own decisions. It was not a matter of cultural background or personality or abilities; it was simply what was true and right. For a blind Sikh girl otherwise subject to so many restrictions, this was a very powerful idea. I could have thought of my life as already written, which would have been more in line with my parents’ views. Or I could have thought of it as a series of accidents beyond my control, which was one way to account for my blindness and my father’s death. However, it seemed much more promising to think of it in terms of choice, in terms of what was still possible and what I could make happen." (Iyengar, 2010, pp. xi-xii).

In 1992, Sheena Iyengar graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School of Business and a B.A. in psychology with a minor in English from the College of Arts and Sciences. She then earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University in 1997. The following year, her dissertation, “Choice and its Discontents,” which asks the question: are there circumstances in which people are better off when they have their choices limited or entirely removed, received the prestigious Best Dissertation Award for 1998 from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.

Academic career

Iyengar's focal line of research concerns choosing, and she has been studying choice for two decades. This work, as well as her work on globalization, has earned Iyengar much recognition. In 2002, she was the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Social Scientists for her work on cultural differences in decision making. Her research appears in academic journals of a wide range of disciplines such as economics, psychology, management, and marketing. Not only is her work acclaimed in academia, but also it has attracted attention in other venues, as well. Her research has been cited in such periodicals as Fortune and Time magazines, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as on National Public Radio and in books such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Iyengar has written a book, The Art of Choosing, which explores the mysteries of choice in everyday life.

Iyengar has taught courses in Management at Columbia Business School since 1998. Specifically, she has taught courses in Globalization, Leadership, Entrepreneurial Creativity, and Decision Making to MBAs, Executive MBAs, and Executives, including at the World Economics Forum in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition, her course on Leadership earned her an Innovation in the Teaching Curriculum award from Columbia Business School.

Sheena Iyengar is an Academic Member of the Behavioral Finance Forum, a Fellow at the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University, an Oversight Board Member at the ING Institute for Retirement Research, and an Institute Fellow at TIAA-CREF. She has previously been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and has received grants from such institutions as The Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business, Citigroup Behavioral Sciences Research Council, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Science Foundation.

Published works

• Tragic Choices: Autonomy and Emotional Response to Medical Decisions
• The Mere Categorization Effect: How the Presence of Categories Increases Choosers' Perceptions of Assortment Variety and Outcome Satisfaction
• Gender Differences in Mate Selection: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment
• Doing Better but Feeling Worse: Looking for the "Best" Job Undermines Satisfaction
• How Much Choice is Too Much? Contributions to 401(k) Retirement Plans
• The Psychological Pleasure and Pain of Choosing: When People Prefer Choosing at the Cost of Subsequent Outcome Satisfaction
• When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?
• Rethinking the Value of Choice: A Cultural Perspective on Intrinsic Motivation
• Optimism and Fundamentalism
• Order in Product Customization Decisions: Evidence from Field Experiments
• Medium of Exchange Matters: What's Fair for Goods Is Unfair for Money
• The Art of Choosing (2010)

Awards and Honors

Title	Organization	Date
Member	Thinkers50	2011
Publisher's Award for Excellence	India Abroad	June 2011
Honoree	Sikh Centennial Gala	April 2011
Gold Medal in General Business & Economics	Axiom Business Book Awards	March 2011
Top Ten Business & Investing Books of 2010	Amazon.com	November 2010
Business Book of the Year 2010 Shortlist	Financial Times and Goldman Sachs	September 2010
Innovation in the Curriculum Teaching Award School (Group Award)	Columbia Business School	Fall 2005
Presidential Early Career Award for Social Scientists	Executive Office of the President Office of Science and Technology Policy	January 2002
Young Investigator Career Award	National Science Foundation	July 2001
Best Dissertation Award	Society for Experimental Social Psychology	October 1998

Fellowships

Title	Organization	Incumbency
Fellow	Society for Personality and Social Psychology	2011-Present
Faculty Advisory Committee Member & Research Director	Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business	2009-Present
Advisory Board Member	ING Institute for Retirement Research	2008-Present
Fellow	Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University	2008-Present
Institute Fellow	TIAA-CREF Institute	August 2007-Present
Academic Member	Behavioral Finance Forum	2007-Present
Invited Fellow	Institute for Advanced Study	2005-2006

See also

• Decision Theory
• Choice Overload
• Cultural identity
• Social Psychology

External links

• Sheena Iyengar's Homepage
• The Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia Business School
• Sheena Iyengar on "The Multiple Choice Problem" Youtube Playlist
• Sheena Iyengar discusses her book, The Art of Choosing Youtube Video
• Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing, TED Talk