Choice

We make decisions every day. Yet we are sometimes perplexed by the decisions we make, and all the more by the decisions of others. To make things more complicated, we live in an age where there are more things to choose from than ever before - the Internet is transforming what we choose and how we choose. It’s also making us more accountable for our choices: what we choose is recorded, analysed, modelled and used to predict our future behaviour. 

So are we in a position to make better choices today than we were a decade or two ago? Do we know more about how people choose? Are there sciences that might help us understand? Certainly there are some who believe so. Psychologists claim we are subject to hidden mental processes that lead us to one thing rather than another; economists offer predictions about what people will buy; and some philosophers claim that what we choose echoes our evolutionary past.

Are these claims merited? Do they reflect the beginnings of a new science of choice? This book offers a critical overview of the claims about choice and human reasoning, showing where they are justified and where they are exaggerated, whilst explaining how these claims are often driven by powerful perspectives that frame the topic.

This book will be an essential reference for anyone interested in how, and to what extent, science can help us to understand the ways people make choices in their everyday lives and how their ways of making choices may be changing today.

RICHARD HARPER is principle researcher at Microsoft Research, Cambridge.
DAVE RANDALL is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University.
WES SHARROCK is Professor of Social Science at the University of Manchester.