Impact of Self-Framing on Decision Making: Timing Matters

Abstract

Our aim was to extend the understanding of self-framing. Our focus was on the impact of self-framing on immediate and delayed decision making. Using cluster sampling, we recruited 350 university undergraduates who completed a self-framing measure adapted from the classic Asia disease problem scenario. The participants were randomly assigned to 2 groups: immediate decision making and delayed decision making. The results indicated that self-framing could influence participants' decisions. In the immediate decision-making group, when the sure option was described (hedonic tone) more positively than the risk involved, the participants preferred the sure option. However, in the delayed decision-making group, self-framing had no significant impact on the decision made. The results showed that both timing (immediate decision or delayed decision) and self-framing had an impact on decision making, implying that immediate decision and delayed decision may have different cognitive mechanisms.

Speakers’ Choice of Frame Reveals Little about Their Trait Emotions but More about Their Preferences and Risk Perception

“…Peng et al (2014) found that individuals with high levels of trait anxiety used more negative words to construct frames. Other studies have found that those who score higher on optimism-a characteristic of angry people (Lerner & Tiedens, 2006)-are more likely to use positive words to frame a decision problem (e.g., lives saved), while pessimistic people are more likely to use negative frames (e.g., lives lost) (Yu et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2020). There are several possible explanations for the discrepancy between our findings and the findings in previous studies.…”

“…One possibility is a difference in study design. While previous studies (e.g., Peng et al, 2014Peng et al, , 2019Wang, 2004;Yu et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2020) have used a framing task where participants can select frames by completing sentences by filling in words of their own choice (e.g., "save", "die", "survive"), participants in our studies made a binary choice between two preselected options, namely success vs. failure. Our task may have facilitated the comparison between positive and negative frames to a larger extent than in previous studies, making this a more cognitive task with relatively little room for the influence of emotions (see, e.g., "cold" and "hot" tasks in Figner et al, 2009).…”