Abstract
The susceptibility of decision-makers’ choices to variations in option framing has been attributed to individual differences in cognitive style. According to this view, individuals who are prone to a more deliberate, or less intuitive, thinking style are less susceptible to framing manipulations. Research findings on the topic, however, have tended to yield small effects, with several studies also being limited in inferential value by methodological drawbacks. We report two experiments that examined the value of several cognitive-style variables, including measures of cognitive reflection, subjective numeracy, actively open-minded thinking, need for cognition, and hemispheric dominance, in predicting participants’ frame-consistent choices. Our experiments used an isomorph of the Asian Disease Problem and we manipulated frames between participants. We controlled for participants’ sex and age, and we manipulated the order in which choice options were presented to participants. In Experiment 1 (N = 190) using an undergraduate sample and in Experiment 2 (N = 316) using a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, we found no significant effect of any of the cognitive-style measures taken on predicting frame-consistent choice, regardless of whether we analyzed participants’ binary choices or their choices weighted by the extent to which participants preferred their chosen option over the non-chosen option. The sole factor that significantly predicted frame-consistent choice was framing: in both experiments, participants were more likely to make frame-consistent choices when the frame was positive than when it was negative, consistent with the tendency toward risk aversion in the task. The present findings do not support the view that individual differences in people’s susceptibility to framing manipulations can be substantially accounted for by individual differences in cognitive style.
Highlights
Literature on risky choice shows that, in general, people are susceptible to a wide range of framing effects
Mandel (2014, Experiment 3) found that the standard framing effect was observed among participants who interpreted the numeric quantifier in the certain option as a lower bound, but it was not observed among participants who interpreted the same quantifiers as meaning an exact value
It is of theoretical interest to compare the difference between this effect size estimate and one obtained from a traditional between groups test of the framing effect
Summary
Literature on risky choice shows that, in general, people are susceptible to a wide range of framing effects. Participants in the negative-framing condition instead chose between these options: If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die. The interest, in part, would seem to stem from a more recent view of such effects as relying on fast and intuitive “System 1” reasoning processes rather than slower, analytic “System 2” reasoning processes (Stanovich and West, 2000; De Martino et al, 2006; Evans, 2008, 2010; Kahneman, 2011) Consistent with this view, some studies find that requiring people to thoughtfully consider problem options (i.e., to shift from System 1 reasoning to the more deliberate and effortful, System 2 reasoning) attenuates framing effects. Almashat et al (2008) found that deeper deliberation in medical decisionmaking, achieved by asking participants to list advantages and disadvantages of each treatment option prior to making a choice, reduced framing effects (see Miller and Fagley, 1991; Sieck and Yates, 1997)
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