Risky Choice Framing Research Articles

Risky-Choice Framing Effects Result Partly From Mismatched Option Descriptions in Gains and Losses

Textbook psychology holds that people usually prefer a certain option over a risky one when options are framed as gains but prefer the opposite when options are framed as losses. However, this pattern can be amplified, eliminated, or reversed depending on whether option descriptions include only positive information (e.g., “200 people will be saved”), only negative information (e.g., “400 people will not be saved”), or both. Previous studies suggest that framing effects arise only when option descriptions are mismatched across frames. Using online and student samples (Ns = 906 and 521), we investigated 81 framing-effect variants created from matched and mismatched pairs of 18 option descriptions (nine in each frame). Description valence or gist explained substantial variation in risk preferences (prospect theory does not predict such variation), but a considerable framing effect remained in our balanced design. Risky-choice framing effects appear to be partly—but not completely—the result of mismatched comparisons.

Advanced age predicts increased susceptibility to attribute, goal, and risky-choice framing in negative frame valences

The framing effect has been extensively studied in the context of attribute, goal, and risky-choice framing, revealing its significant impact on decision-making. However, the interplay between age and the framing effect remains relatively unexplored, and existing findings are inconclusive and conflicting. Addressing this gap, this study investigates the influence of age on all three types of framing using a large cohort of participants (N = 696). The Johnson-Neyman technique was employed to examine the effect across a continuous range of ages. The analysis demonstrated that advanced age significantly increased susceptibility to the framing effect. Moreover, it was found that this susceptibility primarily manifests in response to negative frames across all framing types. These findings not only align with the socioemotional selectivity theory and dual-process model but also underscore the importance of affect heuristics in decision-making among older adults. By offering a robust examination of all three types of framing and their interactions with age, this study provides a theoretical foundation for the role of age as a potential moderator in framing contexts. These findings may therefore inform the development of targeted strategies to mitigate the impact of the framing effect on elderly populations.

Probabilities and the risky-choice framing effect: Evidence for an inverted-U pattern.

Probabilities and the risky-choice framing effect: Evidence for an inverted-U pattern.

Protective behaviors during COVID-19 confinement measures in Greece: the role of anxiety, perceived risk and risky-choice framing.

Confinement measures at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic imposed major changes on the global population. The aim of this study was to explore the level to which the public adhered to protective guidelines by adopting the most appropriate behaviors at that time (such as hand washing with soap and using sanitizer gel) and to identify the determinants of these behaviors. A purposive sample of 1013 individuals was invited and voluntarily participated in the online survey. The questionnaire collected information on demographic data, hand washing, risk perception, anxiety (through the S = Anxiety scale of STAI) and risky-choice framing. Results showed increased levels of anxiety, a moderate perception of the risk of catching coronavirus and increased adoption of protective behaviors, such as handwashing and cleaning surfaces with disinfectant/antiseptic products. Multiple ordinal logistic regression models showed that being female, more educated and cleaning home with disinfectant / antiseptic products predicted handwashing with soap. Additionally, having an increased perception of getting the coronavirus, being older and cleaning the home with disinfectant / antiseptic products predicted handwashing with antiseptics. Public health interventions should take into consideration the unified cleaning pattern and the combined effect of sociodemographic variables and risk perception on the adoption of protective behaviour in the context of a health crisis which is out of people's control.

Working memory capacity and the risky-choice framing effect: A preregistered replication and extension of Corbin et al. ()

Working memory capacity and the risky-choice framing effect: A preregistered replication and extension of Corbin et al. ()

Supplemental Material for Probabilities and the Risky-Choice Framing Effect: Evidence for an Inverted-U Pattern

Supplemental Material for Probabilities and the Risky-Choice Framing Effect: Evidence for an Inverted-U Pattern

PENGARUH CONFIRMATION BIAS DAN RISKY CHOICE FRAMING TERHADAP KEPUTUSAN INVESTASI PETANI

This study aims to determine the effect of Confirmation Bias and Risky Choice Framing on farmers' investment decisions. The questions in this study are whether Confirmation Bias affects farmers' investment decisions and whether Risky Choice Framing affects farmers' investment decisions. The analysis technique in this research includes correlation test, determination test and F test which is a model feasibility test, followed by multiple linear regression analysis and hypothesis testing (t). The sample method uses purposive sampling, with several criteria developed previously. Questionnaires were used to collect data from respondents. Respondents in this study were farmers in Blubur Limbangan District, Garut Regency. In total there are 356 respondents. Based on the results of hypothesis testing (t), Confirmation Bias affects farmers' investment decisions and Risky Choice Framing affects farmers' investment decisions.

Accelerating Psychological Science With Metastudies: A Demonstration Using the Risky-Choice Framing Effect

A metastudy is a set of many tiny studies (microstudies) created from a much larger collection of possibilities. Metastudies can yield many of the benefits of time-consuming replications and meta-analyses but more efficiently and with greater attention to generalizability and the causal effects of moderators. Statistical precision and power are higher than in studies with the same total sample size but with fewer conditions and more participants per condition. In this article, we describe metastudies and their benefits, demonstrate how to conduct a metastudy using the well-known risky-choice framing effect as an example, and report on the generalizability of that effect. In three metastudies (total N = 2,338), the framing effect generalized well across most of the potential moderators tested, as was expected. Surprisingly, however, the effect was up to twice as large when the certain option was replaced with a slightly risky option; prospect theory predicts the opposite, and fuzzy-trace theory predicts no difference. Metastudies provide a relatively quick and not-so-painful way of examining an effect’s generalizability without waiting for a meta-analysis. Both individual labs and multilab networks are encouraged to shift from traditional studies to metastudies.

Why framing effects can be rational

When communication is not disinterested, seemingly inconsistent preferences are predictable from language pragmatics and information non-equivalence. In addition, the classic risky choice framing effect found in the Asian disease task - risk-aversion with gains and risk-seeking with losses - applies to gambles, but tends to be overgeneralized to non-gambling situations.

Teaching & learning guide for: Risky‐choice framing and rational decision‐making

Teaching & learning guide for: Risky‐choice framing and rational decision‐making

Replicating the Disease framing problem during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic: A study of stress, worry, trust, and choice under risk.

In the risky-choice framing effect, different wording of the same options leads to predictably different choices. In a large-scale survey conducted from March to May 2020 and including 88,181 participants from 47 countries, we investigated how stress, concerns, and trust moderated the effect in the Disease problem, a prominent framing problem highly evocative of the COVID-19 pandemic. As predicted by the appraisal-tendency framework, risk aversion and the framing effect in our study were larger than under typical circumstances. Furthermore, perceived stress and concerns over coronavirus were positively associated with the framing effect. Contrary to predictions, however, they were not related to risk aversion. Trust in the government's efforts to handle the coronavirus was associated with neither risk aversion nor the framing effect. The proportion of risky choices and the framing effect varied substantially across nations. Additional exploratory analyses showed that the framing effect was unrelated to reported compliance with safety measures, suggesting, along with similar findings during the pandemic and beyond, that the effectiveness of framing manipulations in public messages might be limited. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, along with directions for further investigations.

Risky choice framing by experience: A methodological note

AbstractIn classic research on judgment and decision making under risk, risk is described by providing participants with the respective outcomes and probabilities in a summary format. Recent research has introduced a different paradigm – decisions-by-experience – where participants learn about risk by sampling from the outcomes, rather than by summary descriptions. This latter research reports a description-experience gap, indicating that some of the classic patterns of risk attitude reverse when people experience the risk. Recent research has attempted to investigate risky choice framing in the decisions-by-experience paradigm. I discuss how this research runs into problems in properly manipulating framing in decisions by experience. Drawing from framing research with animals, I argue that framing effects also exist in experience tasks. The classic Asian Disease task, however, awaits proper translation into an experience paradigm.

Positivity helps the medicine go down: Leveraging framing and affective contexts to enhance the likelihood to take medications.

Affect can influence judgments and decision-making in multiple ways. One way is through (a) integral affect, or affect related to the choice at hand, and another way is through (b) incidental affect, or affect unrelated to the choice at hand. Research suggests integral affect influences risk-related decision-making, especially in the context of risky choice framing. However, the role of affect in other forms of framing (e.g., attribute framing) has received little attention. We examined how integral affect (Study 1) along with incidental affect (Study 2) can alter perceptions of risk and likelihood to take hypothetical medications. Participants read pamphlets about medications with unique side effects presented as a gain (e.g., 86% of people who took this medication did not experience nausea) or loss (e.g., 14% of people who took this medication did experience nausea). Study 2 extended Study 1 by manipulating incidental affect through positive, neutral, and negative affective contexts to examine its impact on subsequent evaluations of framed information. Studies 1 and 2 measured positive and negative feelings about medications, risk perceptions, and likelihood of taking medications. Across both studies, gain-framed attributes led to more positive integral affect, subsequently increasing likelihood to take medications, whereas loss-framed attributes led to more negative feelings and increased perceived riskiness of medications. Study 2 found that positive affective contexts indirectly led to an increased likelihood to take medication by increasing positive feelings about the medications. Taken together, leveraging positivity through gain frames and positive contexts could improve adherence to medication plans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Acute effects of high-potency cannabis flower and cannabis concentrates on everyday life memory and decision making

Statewide legislation has increased public access to high-potency cannabis flower and concentrates, yet federal restrictions limit researchers’ access to relatively low-potency whole-plant cannabis. The goal of this study was to examine the acute effects of high-potency cannabis on cognition using a novel methodology. We further sought to compare cognitive effects of high-potency cannabis flower with and without cannabidiol (CBD), as well as cannabis concentrates to cannabis flower. 80 cannabis users were randomly assigned to stay sober or use their funds to purchase one of three high-potency cannabis products: (1) high-potency flower (≥ 20% THC) without CBD, (2) high-potency flower with CBD, (3) high-potency concentrates (≥ 60% THC) with CBD. Participants were observed over Zoom videoconferencing while inhaling their product or remaining sober and then were administered tests of everyday life memory (prospective, source, temporal order, and false memory) and decision making (risky choice framing, consistency in risk perception, resistance to sunk cost, and over/under confidence) over Zoom. High-potency cannabis flower with CBD impaired free recall, high-potency flower without CBD and concentrates had detrimental effects on source memory, and all three products increased susceptibility to false memories. CBD did not offset impairments and concentrates were self-titrated producing comparable intoxication and impairment as flower.

Risky-choice framing and its null effect on integral emotions

The effects of risky-choice framing are well-established and have been demonstrated in several decision contexts. Recent research has pointed to a role for affect and emotions in risky-choice framing, but those findings may have been influenced by carry-over effects due to the use of multiple decision problems. In a one-off decision, the effects of risky-choice framing on affect and emotions remain unclear. This article extends the risky-choice framing literature by using the Emotion-Imbued Choice model to investigate whether integral fear and anger can account for the effects of risky-choice framing in a one-off decision. In two studies involving a one-off decision about internet connectivity and human lives respectively, we expected higher levels of integral fear in participants who chose the certain option in the positive framing condition as compared to the negative framing condition, and also higher levels of integral anger in participants who chose the risky option in the negative framing condition as compared to the positive framing condition. Our findings did not support these hypotheses and suggest that the effects of risky-choice framing are not due to integral emotions. We explained our findings by proposing that the choice architecture involved in risky-choice framing prevents integral emotions from becoming attached to the choice options because it offers a less effortful decision tactic than considering one’s emotional response to those options. We call for future research to investigate this possibility and to also consider the demand characteristics of conducting risky-choice framing problems online.

Numbers do not add up! The pragmatic approach to the framing of medical treatments

AbstractThe risky choice framing effect disclosed that presenting data in a loss scenario lead decision-makers towards risky choices. Conversely, a gain scenario prevents them from taking a risk. Framing effect robustness has been widely confirmed by psychological literature. However, the framing of medical treatments, based on McNeil et al. (1982) paradigm, raised both methodological doubts and contrasting evidence. Our research aimed to investigate the presence and the nature of the framing effect in the McNeil et al. (1982) paradigm. In particular, we thought that the obtained switch of preferences across frames was due to a misleading formulation of the data given in a negative cumulative frequency format. We conducted three studies: (1) we replicated McNeil et al.’s (1982) original study (N=150) with medicine (n=50), statistics (n=50) and lay (n=50) students; (2) we tested (N=180) our hypothesis by comparing a cumulative frequency format with an alternative version, namely a linear progression one; (3) we compared (N=430) the effect of different formats (cumulative frequency, linear progression and interval frequency) on choices. Our results showed that, while the framing effect is present when employing a cumulative frequency format, it disappears when using a linear progression one. Moreover, our results show that decision-makers better understand information when given in a linear progression and an interval frequency format. In the current paper, we argue that the way in which a problem is formulated plays a relevant role in the representation of the decisional task and the decision-making.

Risky choice framing with various problem descriptions: A replication and extension study

AbstractIn “Risky choice framing: Task versions and a comparison of prospect theory and fuzzy-trace theory”, Kühberger and Tanner (2010) examined the impacts of removing stated zero/non-zero complements of risky options on the gain/loss framing effect. They also tested two rival theoretical explanations for this effect: prospect theory and fuzzy-trace theory. The present study aimed to examine the reliability and robustness of the evidence provided by Kühberger and Tanner by precise replication in Study 1. The original findings were reported for conditions in which the probability of the risky option was fixed, and the expected value of the two alternatives was approximately equivalent. The present study also aimed to examine the generality of their findings under additional conditions in which large, medium and small probabilities of the risky option were assigned, and the expected value of the certain or risky options differed. The main findings of Kühberger and Tanner (2010) were successfully replicated and confirmed under the original and additional conditions. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Interoception moderates the relation between alexithymia and risky-choices in a framing task: A proposal of two-stage model of decision-making

Decision-making depends on the context (frame) in which questions and alternatives are presented. Moreover, research has showed that the ability to detect bodily sensations (interoception) and being able to attribute these changes to emotions correctly (alexithymia) influence how we make decisions. The aim of the present research was to study how interoception and alexithymia might affect the Framing effect (FE), a cognitive bias closely related to emotional system. 42 healthy participants completed the Risky-choice Framing task and their interoception and alexithymia levels were measured. Results showed that the participants were more risk-taking under the negative frames in comparison to the positive ones. In addition, we found that alexithymia and interoception were negatively and positively correlated with the FE, respectively. Finally, the moderation analyses revealed that alexithymia predicted a lower FE only when the interoception was high. Based on previous literature and in our results, we propose a two-stage model of intuitive decision-making.

Risky choice frames shift the structure and emotional valence of internal arguments: A query theory account of the unusual disease problem

AbstractWe examine a Query Theory account of risky choice framing effects — when risky choices are framed as a gain, people are generally risky averse but, when an equivalent choice is framed as a loss, people are risk seeking. Consistent with Query Theory, frames affected the structure of participants’ arguments: gain frame participants listed arguments favoring the certain option earlier and more often than loss frame participants. These argumentative shifts mediated framing effects; manipulating participants initial arguments attenuated them. While emotions, as measured by PANAS, were related to frames but not related to choices, an exploratory text analysis of the affective valence of arguments was related to both. Compared to loss-frame participants, gain-frame participants expressed more positive sentiment towards the certain option than the risky option. Thisrelative-sentiment indexpredicted choices by itself but not when included with structure of arguments. Further, manipulated initial arguments did not significantly affect participant’s relative sentiment. Prior to changing choices, risky choice frames alter both the structure and emotional valence of participants’ internal arguments.

Examining framing effect when subject's perspective matters: Evidence from China

In decision-making research, people's perspectives have received little attention to date. However, by looking at the risky-choice framing effect, results from our experiment suggest that beyond personality traits, the subject's perspective is an important factor in the decision-making process. The effect of perspective was apparent and persisted among the students with higher numeracy. This finding contradicts previous work which states that highly numerate individuals are less susceptible to framing effects, putting forth a number of future research directions on practical financial implications.