Hard Choices: Rutgers Professor Provides Framework for Big Decisions

Ruth Chang’s TED talk, ‘How to Make Hard Choices,’ draws 2.1 million viewers

‘Our error is in thinking that the world holds the answer as to what we should do … Instead, we should think of hard choices as involving alternatives that are ‘on a par’– one is better in some ways, and the other better in other ways, but there is no truth about which we should choose overall.’

 

– Ruth Chang

 

Should I get married now or wait until I finish graduate school? How about law school? Should I go or follow my dream of becoming a chef? What will my parents think?

Ruth Chang believes that we think of difficult decisions like these in the wrong way.

“Our error is in thinking that the world holds the answer as to what we should do,” says Chang, a professor of philosophy in the School of Arts and Sciences.

“If only our brains were big enough to discover all the pros and cons for each option, we think we’d be set,'' Chang says. "Instead, we should think of hard choices as involving alternatives that are ‘on a par’ – one is better in some ways, and the other better in other ways, but there is no truth about which we should choose overall.”

Thinking about decision-making in this manner, Chang says, allows us to commit to an option without being afraid that we’ve made a mistake of fact or reason. “We get to make ourselves who we are when the world doesn’t tell us what to do”, Chang explains. “Reasons don’t require that you spend your Saturday afternoons tending your bonsai garden or that someone else spend her free time working at a soup kitchen. Alternative ways to spend our free time are on a par. By committing to an option you can create reasons for yourself to be one kind of person rather than another. That’s how we become the authors of our own lives.”

Chang’s research focuses on decision making and the human condition. “I’m interested in normativity – that is, I try to understand the ‘shoulds’ of life,” Chang says. “I’m interested in understanding what role itself plays in determining the reasons we have for doing the things we do.”

Chang came to this understanding, in part, after realizing that she was allowing others to write the story of her life.

Although she always thought of studying philosophy, she entered Harvard Law School instead because it was the easiest and safest road to take. When she graduated, Chang should have been happy. She was hired by a prestigious New York law firm where she worked to get a pro bono death penalty client pardoned.

But then a career-ending product liability case made her look inward and ask herself if this is what she really wanted to do for the rest of her life. “I can’t do this,” Chang said to herself, believing that the corporate client was in the wrong. “It isn’t me.”

Chang, who went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford before coming to Rutgers, insists that her story is not unusual. “People often drift through life, taking the path of least resistance or making the choices we think we should make because others tell us that we should make them.”

If social media is any indication, Chang is correct about her story being more universal than unusual.  After speaking at a TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference this year, her talk “How to Make Hard Choices” went viral on YouTube – viewed 2.1 million times by people all over the world, many of whom asked her for help in making hard choices.

There were students who couldn’t decide on a major, lovers who couldn’t decide whom to marry, people in one career who couldn’t decide whether to leave it for another, and even celebrities who wanted advice about their philanthropic activities.

Although Chang was circumspect in her advice to most, she told one woman in no uncertain terms what she should do. The woman had qualms about leaving her abusive husband. Chang told her to leave, insisting that no woman should stay in an abusive marriage.

“I never saw it coming,” says Chang about the outpouring she received as a result of the talk. “I had no idea how many people were so vexed about making decisions.”