Atlas · 01 / 02
A country prepares for an outbreak
When the odds are known but the outcome is not, how do you decide?
Two short questions.
Imagine a country preparing for the outbreak of an unusual disease, expected to kill 600 people.
Two programs to fight the disease have been proposed. Assume the scientific estimates of their consequences are exact.
Some time later.
A different committee has been asked to review the same country's response.
It was briefed independently, and the estimates it was given are just as exact.
Round 1
- Program A: 200 people will be saved.
- Program B: there is a 1/3 chance that all 600 people will be saved, and a 2/3 chance that no one will be saved.
Round 2
- Program A: 400 people will die.
- Program B: there is a 1/3 chance that nobody will die, and a 2/3 chance that all 600 people will die.
In the original study, the same outcomes were worded twice: once as lives saved, once as deaths.
72% of the people who read the lives-saved wording picked the sure programme. Among those who read the deaths wording, 22% did.
Tversky & Kahneman, Science, 1981 · N = 152 / 155
The same hundred people. Only the wording changed.
Framed as lives savedProgram A 72%
Framed as deathsProgram A 22%
- Program A
- Program B
Framing Effect
The frame a sentence draws around a sure outcome decides how it feels.
Reference point
How the outcome feels
- Program A (200 saved)
- Program B (expected value)
- Reference point
Why this happens
The same six-hundred outcome, read against two different zeros. In the "saved" sentence, zero is 'they all die'; from there, +200 is a gain. In the "die" sentence, zero is 'they all live'; from there, -400 is a loss. The number is the same. The zero moved. That border a sentence draws around a number is the frame the concept is named after.
The full account of how the mind weighs those gains and losses belongs to Prospect Theory(upcoming).
In the wild
Some of the six pairs below are one fact worded two ways; others are two different things presented as if they were the same. Tell them apart.
1 / 6
Healthcare
90% survival rate
10% mortality rate
Which of these is framing?
Four things you could run into tomorrow. Is each one the same fact worded another way?
A till sign reading "2% surcharge for paying by card" rather than "2% discount for paying cash".
"95% fat free" on a tub of yoghurt.
An estate agent showing you the most expensive flat first.
A newsletter box that arrives already ticked.
Where this shows up again
The next cookie banner will do this, and so will the next survival-rate figure, the next card surcharge that could have been a cash discount, and the next tax-cut headline.
The trick is not to catch every one of them. It is to notice, once in a while, that a number that felt safe would have read differently under the other wording.
References
- Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1981)· cited aboveThe framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science 211(4481), 453–458
- Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1979)Prospect Theory: an analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica 47(2), 263–291
- Kahneman, D. (2011)Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
One sentence to walk away with
A number rarely tells you which zero it was measured from. The words next to it decide.