CODEXCard 5 of 8 · Core Cognitive Biases
Framing effect
The wrapper changes the choice.
The framing effect means that the wording around a choice can change the decision, even when the underlying facts are exactly the same. Describe an outcome as a gain and people tend to play safe. Describe the same outcome as a loss and many become willing to gamble. The options did not change. Only the presentation did.
Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated this in the early 1980s, and Kahneman discusses it at length in Thinking, Fast and Slow. It follows from how the fast, intuitive mind works. It reacts to the emotional colour of words like saved, lost, survive and die before the slower mind has a chance to translate everything into neutral numbers.
The mistake is trying to become immune to frames. Nobody is, including people who study the effect. A more realistic discipline is translation: take any important option and restate it in the opposite frame before deciding. Then notice which frame the person presenting it chose, because that choice is often deliberate.
Framing works hand in hand with loss aversion. Because losses weigh more than gains, a frame that highlights what you stand to lose is usually the more persuasive one, which is why sales and political messages lean on it.
Example
A supermarket labels minced beef as 85 percent lean, and it seems like a healthy pick. The pack next to it says 15 percent fat, and you hesitate, even though both describe exactly the same product. Saying both versions to yourself puts you back in charge of the choice.
Try it this week
The next time you face a choice presented with a percentage or a benefit, restate it in the opposite frame before you decide.
From Core Cognitive Biases (Daniel Kahneman · 2011).
