Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar is the S. T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and holds a PhD in social psychology from Stanford. She studies choice, innovation and creativity. Her well-known “jam study”, carried out as a graduate student, showed that when people are offered too many options, such as 24 varieties of jam, they are less likely to choose anything at all. She is the author of The Art of Choosing, a Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year, and Think Bigger.

In The art of choosing, a TED talk from 2010, Sheena Iyengar examines choice and decision-making. The talk is filed under behavioral economics, cognitive psychology and social design. For product designers, her research is a reminder that offering more options does not always help users decide.