Oddly Wired
← all facts
decision making

You reach different conclusions depending on how options are presented.

The framing effect describes how your decision-making shifts based on whether an outcome is described in terms of gains or losses.

When participants in a 1981 study were faced with a public health dilemma, they overwhelmingly chose the safer option when it was framed as 'saving lives,' but switched to the riskier option when it was framed as 'lives lost.'

You are not choosing the outcome, but the way someone else described it to you.

Where this comes from

Study
Tversky & Kahneman, 1981
What the check found
The claim accurately describes the seminal 1981 'Asian Disease Problem' study by Tversky and Kahneman. Although the provided text does not contain the specific quote, the effect is a well-established psychological finding.
Confidence
Solid, with limits

Related

One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.