A famous experiment by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky went as follows:Imagine that the US is preparing for an outbreak of an unusual disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative medicines to combat the disease have been proposed.
Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the medicines are as follows:
If treatment A is undertaken, 200 will be saved.
If treatment B is undertaken, there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved.
Which one of the two treatments would you prefer?
Kahneman and Tversky found that a substantial majority of people would choose treatment A.
Then they gave another group of people the assignment but with the following description of the (same) options:
If treatment A is undertaken, 400 people will die.
If treatment B is undertaken, there is a one-third probability that nobody will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die.
They found that, in this case, a clear majority of respondents favored treatment B! But the treatments really are exactly the same in both cases…!? How come people’s preferences flip although they are confronted with the exact same set of choices (be it described slightly differently)?
It is due to what we call “framing effects”, and they greatly affect people’s preferences and decisions.
For instance, In the first case, treatment A is described in terms of the certainty of surviving (which people like), but in the second case it is described in terms of the certainty of dying (which people don’t like at all!). Therefore, people choose A when confronted with the first treatment description, while in the second case they favor B, although the treatments are the same in both situations.
This effect is quite omni-present. How you frame a problem or solution to someone (e.g. your boss) is going to influence substantially what option he is going to prefer. How the people who work for you frame a situation while presenting to you, is also going to determine what you will choose.
Did I frame this in a way that can be of help to you?
