The Myth of Choice : Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits

We are all fixated on the idea of choice. As people we love to feel we have the choice, and little offends us more than when that notion is taken away from us.

Western political theory is based on the consent of the governed.

Our legal systems are built upon the argument that people freely bear responsibility for the choices we make.

At the heart of consumer culture is the idea that we can have it our way.

But what if choice is more limited than we like to think?

What are the implications for us as individuals and as a society if we were to discover we have less free will than we realize?

In this provocative book, Kent Greenfield poses unsettling questions about the choices we make, tapping into scholarship on topics ranging from brain science to economics, political theory to sociology.

His discoveries, told through an entertaining array of news events, personal anecdotes, crime stories, and legal decisions, confirm that many factors, conscious and unconscious, limit our free will.

Worse, by failing to perceive them we leave ourselves open to manipulation. In The Myth of Choice, Kent Greenfield uses scores of real-life stories to explore the modern fixation on choice and our confused responses to it, but also offers useful suggestions to help us become better decision makers as individuals.