Choices and opportunities: another effect of framing on decisions

✍ Scribed by Steven K. Jones; Deborah Frisch; Tricia J. Yurak; Eric Kim

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 181 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-3257
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0771(199809)11:3<211::aid-bdm298>3.0.co;2-o

✦ Synopsis

Many decisions can be framed either as choices' between alternative courses of action (e.g. Should I move to New York or stay in Chicago?) or as opportunities' to pursue a particular course of action (i.e. Should I move to New York?). Although there is no logical dierence between these two dierent decision frames, there may be important psychological dierences between them. In four studies, we explore the dierences between choices' and opportunities'. The results of Studies 1 and 2 show that college students view many of the decisions they typically face as opportunities, rather than choices. Further, the results of Study 2 suggest that the frame students adopt is systematically related to the preferences they express. The latter ®nding led to Studies 3 and 4, where we show that preferences can be in¯uenced by encouraging people to adopt one decision frame rather than another.