RESPONSE MODE, FRAMING, AND INFORMATION-PROCESSING EFFECTS IN RISK ASSESSMENT

The chapter on framing by Tversky and Kahneman (1982) demonstrates that normatively inconsequential changes in the formulation of choice problems significantly affect preferences. These effects are noteworthy because they are sizable (sometimes complete reversals of preference), because they violate important tenets of rationality, and because they influence not only behavior but how the consequences of behavior are experienced. These perturbations are traced (in prospect theory; see Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) to the interaction between the manner in which acts, contingencies, and outcomes are framed in decision problems and general propensities for treating values and uncertainty in nonlinear ways.