Essays About Choice: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts

Finding it hard to start your essays about choice? Here are our essay examples and prompts to inspire you. 

Making choices, whether big or small, makes up the very journey of our lives. Our choices are influenced by various factors, such as our preferences, beliefs, experiences, and cognitive capacity. Our choices unravel our lives and shape us into the person we choose to be. 

However, humans can easily be distracted and could be irrational when making choices. With this, new studies have emerged to learn more accurately about our thought processes and help us move beyond our limited rationality when making our choices. 

Read on and see our round-up of compelling essay examples and prompts to inspire you in writing your piece about choice.

1. The Art Of Decision-Making by Joshua Rothman

“One of the paradoxes of life is that our big decisions are often less calculated than our small ones are. We agonize over what to stream on Netflix, then let TV shows persuade us to move to New York; buying a new laptop may involve weeks of Internet research, but the deliberations behind a life-changing breakup could consist of a few bottles of wine.”

The article dives deep into the mind’s methods of making choices. It tackles various theories and analyses from various writers and philosophers, such as the decision theory where you make a “multidimensional matrix” in coming up with the most viable choice based on your existing values and the “transformative experience” where today’s values may not determine your tomorrow but makes you fulfilled, nevertheless.

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2. Tactical Generals: Leaders, Technology, And The Perils by Peter W. Singer

“The challenge is that tactical generals often overestimate how much they really know about what happens on the ground. New technologies may give them an unprecedented view of the battlefield and the ability to reach into it as never before, but this view remains limited.”

Fourth industrial technologies such as artificial intelligence are everywhere and are now penetrating the military system, enabling generals to make more tactical choices. This development allows generals a broader insight into the situation, stripped of the emotional and human interventions that can spoil a rational and sound choice. However, these computer systems remain fraught with challenges and must be dealt with with caution.

3. How Your Emotions Influence Your Decisions by Svetlana W. Whitener

“… emotions influence, skew or sometimes completely determine the outcome of a large number of decisions we are confronted with in a day. Therefore, it behooves all of us who want to make the best, most objective decisions to know all we can about emotions and their effect on our decision-making.”

Whitener stresses that external and hormonal factors significantly affect our decisions but determining the role and impact of our emotions helps us make positive decisions. This exercise requires being circumspect in our emotions in a given situation and, of course, not making a decision when under stress or pressure. Check out these essays about respect.

4. How To Choose The Right Pet For You by Roxanna Coldiron

“Whether we choose to adopt a cat, dog, rabbit, fish, bird, hamster, or guinea pig, knowing that we provide that animal with the best care that it needs is an important aspect of being a pet caretaker. But it’s also about the individual animal.”

Knowing which pet is best for you boils down to carefully evaluating your limits and lifestyle preference. This essay provides a list of questions you should first ask yourself regarding the time and energy you can commit before adopting a pet. It also provides a run-through of pets and their habits that can match your limits and preferences. 

5. How to Make Money Decisions When The Future Is Uncertain by Veronica Dagher and Julia Carpenter

How do I know when is a good time to invest? The article answers this burning financial question and many more amid a period of financial uncertainties propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also provides tips, such as evaluating your short and long-term financial goals and tapping an accountant or financial adviser, to help readers make a confident choice in their finances. 

8 Prompts On essays about choice

Get creative with our list of prompts on choice:

1. The Hardest But Best Choice In My Life

What is now your best choice may have seemed a difficult one at first. So, talk about the situation where you had to make this hard decision. Then, lay down the lessons you have learned from analyzing the pros and cons of a situation and how you are now benefiting from this choice. Your scenarios can range from picking your school or course for college or dropping out some toxic friends or relatives. 

2. How To Make Good Decisions

Making the right choice is a life skill, but it’s easier said than done. First, gather recent research studies that shed light on the various factors that affect how we come up with our choices. Then, look into the best practices to make good decisions based on what psychologists, therapists, and other experts recommend. Finally, to add a personal touch to your essay, describe how you make decisions that effectively result in positive outcomes.  

3. “My Body, My Choice.”

“My Body, My Choice” is a feminist slogan that refers to women’s right to choose what’s best for their bodies. The slogan aimed to resist the traditional practice of fixed marriages and fight for women’s reproductive rights, such as abortion. For this prompt, you may underscore the importance of listening to women when making policies and rules that involve their bodies and health. You may even discuss the controversial Roe v. Wade ruling and provide your insights on this landmark overturn of women’s rights to abortion.

4. The Consequences Of Bad Choices

Bad choices in major life decisions can lead to disastrous events. And we’ve all had our fair share of bad choices. So first, analyze why people tend to make bad decisions. Next, write about the common consequences students face when they fall into the trap of bad choices. Then, talk about an experience where your bad judgment led you to an undesirable situation. Finally, write the lessons you’ve learned from this experience and how this improved your life choices. 

5. How Consumers Make Choices

How does a shopper’s mind work? Your essay can answer this through the lens of marketers. You can start by mapping out the stages consumers go through when choosing. Then, identify the fundamental principles that help marketers effectively drive more sales—finally, research how marketers are persuading their target audience through their branding imagery and emotional connection.

6. The Rise Of Behavioral Economics

Behavioral economics combines the teaching of psychology and economics to study how humans arrive at their economic choices. The discipline challenges the fundamental principle in economic models, which assumes that humans make rational choices. First, provide a brief overview of behavioral economics and how it was born and evolved over the decades. Finally, offer insights on how you think behavioral economics can be adopted in private companies and government agencies to improve decision-making. 

7. Moral Choices

First, define a moral choice. Then, enumerate the factors that can shape a moral choice, such as religion, ethics, culture, and gender. You can also zoom into a certain scenario that sparks debates on the morality of choice, such as in warfare when generals decide whether to drop a bomb or when to forge on or withdraw from a battle. Finally, you may also feature people in history who have managed to let their moral code prevail in their judgment and actions, even in the face of great danger.

8. Analyzed The Poem “The Road Not Taken.”

Making choices and the opportunities one can miss out on are the central themes in this poem by Robert Frost. First, summarize the poem and analyze what the author says about making choices. Then, attempt to answer what the diverging roads represent and what taking the less traveled road signifies. Finally, narrate an event in your life when you made an unpopular choice. Share whether you regret the choice or ended up being satisfied with it.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips.

But if you’re still stuck, there’s no need to fret. Instead, check out our general resource of essay writing topics.