“People who perceive the negative experiences in their lives as the result of uncontrollable forces are at a higher risk for depression than those who believe they have control”

“What affected people’s health most in these studies wasn’t the actual level of control that people had in their jobs, but the amount of control they perceived themselves as having.”

“The less control people had over their work, the higher their blood pressure during work hours. Moreover, blood pressure at home was unrelated to the level of job control, indicating that the spike during work hours was specifically caused by lack of choice on the job. People with little control over their work also experienced more back pain, missed more days of work due to illness in general, and had higher rates of mental illness—the human equivalent of stereotypies, resulting in the decreased quality of life common to animals reared in captivity.”

“The higher the exposure a product receives and the greater its perceived social acceptability, the more people will buy it, which in turn further increases its exposure and acceptability.”

“When we speak of choice, what we mean is the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. In order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible.”

“The idealized capitalist system first and foremost emphasizes “freedom from” external restrictions on one’s ability to rise in society’s ranks. At least in theory, people are given equal opportunity to succeed or fail based on their own merits. But a world without restrictions is a competitive one, and people who are more talented, harder working, or simply luckier will have an advantage. As a result, a wide variety of goods and services will exist, but not everyone will have access to the full range of choice available; some people may even be unable to afford basic necessities such as food, housing, and health care. The idealized communist/socialist system, by contrast, aims for equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities, guaranteeing all its members the “freedom to” obtain an adequate standard of living. The rub is that the additional resources given to those in need have to come from somewhere, or more specifically someone, which means reducing others’ “freedom from” and having the state commandeer their property and dictate their economic activities.”

“Our beliefs about how much personal control people have over their lives, which are shaped in part by the level of individualism to which we have been exposed, also play an important role in our preferences for allocating choice.”