Listening and reading exercise:

1. Listen to the first part of a talk about decision-making, then tell your
partners what the speaker`s main idea is.

2. Listen again and fill in the gaps with the words you hear:
How to make choosing easier?

Do you know how many _____________you make in a typical day? Do you

know how many choices you make in typical week? I recently did a
_________________ with over 2,000 Americans, and the average number of
choices that the typical American reports making is about 70 in a typical day.
There was also recently a study done with CEOs in which they followed
CEOs around for a whole week. And these ________________ simply
documented all the various tasks that these CEOs engaged in and how much
time they spent engaging in making decisions related to these tasks. And they
found that the average CEO engaged in about 139 tasks in a week. Each task
was made up of many, many, many sub-choices of course. 50 percent of their
decisions were made in nine minutes or less. Only about 12 percent of the
____________________ did they make an hour or more of their time. Think
about your own choices. Do you know how many choices make it into your
nine minute category versus your one hour category? How well do you think
you're doing at managing those choices?
1:22 Today I want to talk about one of the biggest modern day choosing
problems that we have, which is the choice ___________________ problem. I
want to talk about the problem and some ________________ solutions. Now
as I talk about this problem, I'm going to have some ________________ for
you and I'm going to want to know your answers. So when I ask you a
question, since I'm blind, only raise your hand if you want to burn off some
calories. (Laughter) Otherwise, when I ask you a question, and if your answer
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Miss. Karina Len

is yes, I'd like you to _____________________. So for my first question for

you today: Are you guys ready to hear about the choice overload problem?
(Applause) Thank you.
2:07 So when I was a ___________________ student at Stanford University, I
used to go to this very, very upscale grocery store; at least at that time it was
truly upscale. It was a store called Draeger's. Now this store, it was almost like
going to an amusement park. They had 250 different kinds of mustards and
vinegars and over 500 different kinds of fruits and vegetables and more than
two dozen different kinds of bottled water -- and this was during a time when
we actually used to drink tap water. I used to love going to this store, but on
one occasion I asked myself, well how come you never buy anything? Here's
their olive oil aisle. They had over 75 different kinds of olive oil, including
those that were in a locked case that came from thousand-year-old olive trees.
2:51 So I one day decided to pay a visit to the manager, and I asked the
manager, "Is this model of offering people all this choice really working?"
And he pointed to the busloads of tourists that would ________________
everyday, with cameras ready usually. We decided to do a little experiment,
and we __________________ jam for our experiment. Here's their jam aisle.
They had 348 different kinds of jam. We set up a little tasting booth right near
the entrance of the store. We there put out six different flavors of jam or 24
different flavors of jam, and we looked at two things: First, in which case were
people more likely to stop, sample some jam? More people stopped when
there were 24, about 60 percent, than when there were six, about 40 percent.
The next thing we looked at is in which case were people more likely to buy a
jar of jam. Now we see the opposite effect. Of the people who stopped when
there were 24, only three percent of them actually bought a jar of jam. Of the
people who stopped when there were six, well now we saw that 30 percent of
them actually bought a jar of jam. Now if you do the math, people were at
least six times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they encountered six than if
they encountered 24.
4:05 Now choosing not to buy a jar of jam is probably good for us -- at least
it's good for our waistlines -- but it turns out that this choice overload problem
affects us even in very consequential decisions. We choose not to choose, even
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Miss. Karina Len

when it goes against our best self-interests. So now for the topic of today:
financial savings. Now I'm going to describe to you a study I did with Gur
Huberman, Emir Kamenica, Wei Jang where we looked at the
_________________________ decisions of nearly a million Americans from
about 650 plans all in the U.S. And what we looked at was whether the
number of fund offerings available in a retirement savings plan, the 401(k)
plan, does that affect people's likelihood to save more for tomorrow. And what
we found was that indeed there was a correlation. So in these plans, we had
about 657 plans that ranged from offering people anywhere from two to 59
different fund offerings. And what we found was that, the more funds offered,
indeed, there was less participation rate.

3. Read the script and try to match the definitions below to the words in
italics:
a. To put too many things in/on something
_________________
b. to succeed in doing or dealing with something, especially something
difficult.
________________
c. a small space like a box that a person can go into and try something
____________
____
d. The chance that something will happen. ______________________
e. Involved in something.
______________________
f. an imaginary line going round the narrowest part of your waist
__________________
g. very high quality and intended to be bought by people who are quite
rich.
_______________________
h. To be known or discovered finally and surprisingly.
_______________________

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Miss. Karina Len