Cobra Effect · Thinking and evidence
The framing effect
The same facts, worded differently, lead to different choices.
6 cards, read aloud in 2:28, with a test and sources.
A disease is coming. It is expected to kill 600 people.
You have two programmes to choose from. Programme A: 200 people will be saved. Programme B: a one in three chance that all 600 are saved, and a two in three chance that nobody is. Most people take A. A sure 200 is better than a gamble.
Now the same choice, in different words.
Programme C: 400 people will die. Programme D: a one in three chance that nobody dies, and a two in three chance that all 600 die. Most people take D. Better to gamble than to accept 400 deaths. Read them again. A and C are the same programme. So are B and D.
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman published that in 1981.
Given the first wording, 72% chose the sure thing. Given the second, 78% chose the gamble. Nothing about the world had changed. Only the words. They called it the framing effect.
Saving sounds like a gain. Dying sounds like a loss.
People protect a gain and take risks to avoid a loss. So the frame that speaks of lives saved makes you cautious. And the frame that speaks of deaths makes you gamble. The frame does not just describe the choice. It makes it.
Doctors fall for it too.
In 1982 researchers described a lung cancer treatment to physicians. Some heard that 90% of patients survive the surgery. Others heard that 10% die. Same number, and the doctors who heard about dying were markedly less keen on surgery. Beef sold as 75% lean tastes better than beef sold as 25% fat. It is the same beef.
You cannot see a frame from inside it. So step outside.
Whenever a choice arrives in words, turn it over. Say it as a gain, then say it as a loss. If your answer flips, the words were choosing for you. And when you are the one writing the words, know that you are holding the frame.
Sources
- Framing effect, Wikipedia. The disease problem with the numbers, the 1981 paper in Science, and the studies since. Search The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice for the original.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, 2011. Chapter thirty four, Frames and Reality, tells the disease problem and the lung cancer study, and explains why the same fact in two frames feels like two facts.
- Prospect theory, Wikipedia. The theory underneath the frames. Why gains and losses are weighed from a reference point, and why the reference point can be moved by a sentence.
Nearby ideas
- Loss aversion. Losing something hurts about twice as much as gaining it pleases.
- Anchoring. The first number you hear bends every estimate that follows.
- The availability heuristic. Vivid stories make rare dangers feel common.
- The curse of knowledge. Once you know something, you cannot see what a beginner is missing.
- Bayesian updating. Change your mind in proportion to the strength of the evidence.
- Overconfidence. Why we feel more certain than our knowledge allows.
- The halo effect. One good quality colours how we judge all the others.
- Motivated reasoning. We set a lower bar for evidence we want to believe.