Research
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman explored how different phrasing affected participants' responses to a choice in a hypothetical life and death situation in 1981.
Participants were asked to choose between two treatments for 600 people affected by a deadly disease. Treatment A was predicted to result in 400 deaths, whereas treatment B had a 33% chance that no one would die but a 66% chance that everyone would die. This choice was then presented to participants either with positive framing, i.e. how many people would live, or with negative framing, i.e. how many people would die.
| Framing | Treatment A | Treatment B |
|---|---|---|
| Positive | "Saves 200 lives" | "A 33% chance of saving all 600 people, 66% possibility of saving no one." |
| Negative | "400 people will die" | "A 33% chance that no people will die, 66% probability that all 600 will die." |
Treatment A was chosen by 72% of participants when it was presented with positive framing ("saves 200 lives") dropping to only 22% when the same choice was presented with negative framing ("400 people will die").
This effect has been shown in other contexts:
- 93% of PhD students registered early when a penalty fee for late registration was emphasized, with only 67% doing so when this was presented as a discount for earlier registration.
- 62% of people disagreed with allowing "public condemnation of democracy", but only 46% of people agreed that it was right to "forbid public condemnation of democracy".
- More people will support an economic policy if the employment rate is emphasised than when the associated unemployment rates is highlighted.
- It has been argued that pretrial detention may increase a defendant's willingness to accept a plea bargain, since imprisonment, rather than freedom, will be his baseline, and pleading guilty will be viewed as an event that will cause his earlier release rather than as an event that will put him in prison.
Read more about this topic: Framing Effect (psychology)
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