Effects Of Framing On Decision Making

How Framing Effects Contribute to Decision Making
Decision making is a cognitive process that is guided by a number of strategies, and occurs when making a choice. There are an infinite number of decisions made on a daily basis, most of which are made quickly, based off of previous knowledge of the situation. These strategies should lead to correct decision making but sometimes, when used incorrectly, biased decisions (incorrect decisions) occur. Framing often leads to biased decisions because it manipulates the way a message is received. Two different types of framing that influence a person’s decision are negative and positive framing. Positive framing occurs when presented with a gain, while negative framing occurs when presented with a …show more content…
In this study they set out to see how rational choices were made. In order to do this they came up with a set of scenario problems. Each set of scenario problems was the same, but they were framed differently. Participants were given two scenarios, one pertaining to human life, the other pertaining to choices about money (similar to the study conducted for this paper). Tversky & Kahneman found that framing impacted the way participants made decisions. When participants were presented with a sure loss they made risk taking decisions, while being presented with a sure gain made them risk aversive. This is important to understand because framing can be used to manipulate a situation in a way that is not beneficial for the consumer of information. It is also important to this study, because the same types of positive and negative framing were used in the scenarios created. While framing can manipulate a decision, there is a set of strategies the people use in order to make decisions when there is a lack of information given about the …show more content…
In his study questions were framed either of mortality or survival, as well as a scenario about pregnancy: either deciding against it or choosing to still go through with it if it involved certain risks. A significant difference between men and women was found in the pregnancy scenario, women were more likely to still favor a pregnancy as well as see it more positively than men did. McNeil et al. believed that showed how “people interpret mixed or ambiguous frames in a selective fashion that is consistent with their values and/or beliefs” (p. 567). It is important to take into account how framing can shape a person’s decision, especially in the medical world. If physicians are biased toward a specific treatment they may not be fully offering all options that the patient may want to explore, and therefore are not allowing the patient to truly take an active role in their own health