Another frame, another game? Explaining framing effects in economic games

Abstract

Small changes in the framing of games (i.e., the way in which the game situation is described to participants) can have large effects on players' choices. For example, referring to a prisoner's dilemma game as the "Community Game" as opposed to the "Wall Street Game" can double the cooperation rate (Liberman, Samuels, & Ross, 2004). Framing effects are an empirically well-studied phenomenon. However, a coherent theoretical explanation of the observed effects is still lacking. We distinguish between two types of framings - valence framing and context framing - and provide an overview of three general classes of theories that may account for the observed changes in behaviour.

Gender Differences in the Response to Decision Power and Responsibility—Framing Effects in a Dictator Game

“…In this paper, we study the effect of two different context frames [9] on dictators' decisions, specifically the effect of two different texts, which participants read before making their decision. In one treatment, this text affirms the dictators' freedom of decision and decision power 1 while in the other treatment the text reminds dictators of their responsibility for the other player.…”

Playing a Different Game: Situation Perception Mediates Framing Effects on Cooperative Behaviour

“…These different classes of situations may then come with different decision rules, leading to frame-induced changes in behaviour. In this way, norms accounts can capture all framing effects; at the same time, they do not specify distinct mechanisms (Gerlach & Jaeger, 2016; note also that Gerlach et al, 2017 do not identify outcomes that would falsify a social norms account). Indeed, insofar as people follow descriptive norms-i.e., conditioning only on their first-order beliefs-the account makes the same predictions as the coordination hypothesis.…”

“…We propose an underlying general mechanism for a broad class of framing effects which have been classified as "context frames" (Levin et al, 1998;Gerlach & Jaeger, 2016). We test this by framing a Prisoner's Dilemma as either a 'community' or 'stock exchange' game, expecting to replicate the effect of this frame on the rate of cooperation in a simultaneous one-shot game (Liberman et al, 2004;Ross & Ward, 1996).…”

“…Even players whose preferences are not altered by a frame may behave differently if they have certain social preferences and they come to believe that other players will react to the frame. In this case, frames serve as coordination devices for players with relevant social preferences (Ellingsen et al, 2012;Dreber et al, 2013;Gerlach & Jaeger, 2016). Such players condition their own behaviour on the behaviour of others, for example by cooperating only to the degree that they believe other players will cooperate (Fischbacher & Gächter, 2010;Fischbacher, Gächter, & PLAYING A DIFFERENT GAME Fehr, 2001).…”

“…Hagen & Hammerstein's, 2006, notion of "implicit features") is manipulated while the "deep structure" (or "explicit features"; especially the outcome matrix) remains the same. To taxonomise the vast range of manipulations, Gerlach and Jaeger (2016;Gerlach et al, 2017) distinguish between three broad classes of frames:…”