The way a question is asked can change completely the answer we provide, as well as the decisions we make every day

We all think to be rational and to make decisions based on facts and logical reasoning. This is also what many organizations (starting with social media and political representatives) like us to think, indicating us that "people have decided X" or that "people have voted Y".

At the same time, the way a question is asked changes completely the answer we provide, as well as the decisions we make every day 

Among the many examples of this, the framing effect is a cognitive bias where people make completely different decisions on something based solely on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations; e.g. as a loss or as a gain.

People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented. Prospect theory shows us that a loss is more significant than the equivalent gain and that a sure gain is favored over a probabilistic gain, while a probabilistic loss is preferred to a definite loss. One of the dangers of framing effects is that people are often provided with options within the context of only one of the two frames.

The concept helps to develop an understanding of frame analysis within social movements, and also in the formation of political opinion where spin plays a large role in political opinion polls that are framed to encourage a response beneficial to the organization that has commissioned the poll. In all these cases, people answer in completely different ways to the poll questions solely based on the way the questions are formulated.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman explored how different phrasing affected participants' responses to a choice in a hypothetical life and death situation already in 1981. Participants were in this case asked to choose between two treatments for 600 people affected by a deadly disease, where:

• Treatment A was predicted to result in 400 deaths,
• Treatment B had a 33% chance that no one would die, but a 66% chance that everyone (all 600 people) would die.

Although the two treatments had the same "expected" number of people saved, from a probabilistic/statistical perspective, the choice was presented to participants either with positive framing, i.e. how many people would live, or with negative framing, i.e. how many people would die.

Treatment A was chosen by 72% of participants when it was presented with positive framing ("saves 200 lives") dropping to 22% when the same choice was presented with negative framing ("400 people will die").

Basically, the "same question" based on exactly the same facts and exactly the same data brought people to completely opposite decisions based solely on the way the question was formulated.

This framing effect has been shown to happen in lots of different contexts, everyday, everywhere, including for instance cases where 93% of PhD students register early when a penalty fee for late registration is emphasized, with only 67% do so when this is presented as a discount for earlier registration.

What do you think? Were you aware of this? Did you experienced this in your life? Maybe... did you realize just now that this happened also to you?