Framing

Framing is how a choice is worded. Tell people a surgery has a ninety percent survival rate and most lean toward it. Tell them it has a ten percent death rate and more hesitate. The facts are the same, but the picture is different.

Research on such effects, famously by Kahneman and Tversky, showed that people often choose differently when outcomes are described as gains than when the same outcomes are described as losses. A discount feels better than a surcharge, even when the price is the same.

You cannot remove framing, but you can test for it. Restate the choice in the opposite frame, and ask whether your answer holds. If it flips, the wording, not the facts, is doing the work.

The surgery leaflet

A leaflet says a treatment “saves 90 of every 100 patients.” Mo feels reassured. His sister reads it again as “10 of every 100 patients still die,” and feels uneasy.

They put the numbers side by side and see the same fact. Mo asks the doctor about both the benefits and the risks, and about what happens to patients who do not have the treatment.

Try this today Take one claim you heard and restate it in the opposite frame, such as saved versus lost.