The framing effect is a psychological theory that says people will have different reactions to similar statements that are framed differently. This theory has been researched by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.
Okay, I’m going to give you two statements.
Then, after reading them, I want you to write down the option you are going to choose:
- Statement 1: Option A will allow you to save $300.
- Statement 2: Option B has a 42.8 percent chance of you saving $700 and a 57 percent chance you will lose everything.
Which statement did you choose?
See, this is a framing effect.
The two options are exactly the same, but they’re framed (or written) differently.
You chose one over the other (you probably picked Statement A, but we’ll talk about that later) because you probably saw one as safer.
The Framing Effect Experiment
The framing effect is a psychological theory that says a person will pick the option or answer that is framed to provide a gain (though both statements are equal).
In 1981, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman performed a set of experiments to test this theory.
First, they surveyed a group of people with two alternative statements, much like what I did earlier in this post. They asked the subjects to select a treatment for a deadly disease:
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“Option A saves 200 people’s lives.
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Option B has a 33 percent chance of saving all 600 people and a 66 percent possibility of saving no one.”
For this survey, 72 percent of people selected option A, while only 28 percent picked option B. Though both of the options are equal, option A is written in a way that makes it sound safer. Option B, on the other hand, is written in a way that expresses too much risk.
In the second survey, new participants were asked to pick between two different alternative options:
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“If option C is taken, then 400 people die
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If option D is taken, then there is a 33 percent chance that no people will die and a 66 percent chance that all 600 will die.”
For this set, 78 percent of people chose option D, whereas 22 percent chose option C.
The Results
So why did the percentages flip? Well, for starters, the language was changed.
For the first set of options, the language was positive (talks about people surviving), while the second set used negative language (talks about people dying).
Additionally, the certainty effect was also at play. This theory says that a sure gain will always trump a problematic gain.
From this survey, the researchers learned that people tend to be more conservative (or safer) when statements are framed to show gains.
When the statements are framed to show losses, people tend to be riskier.
This experiment, however, has been criticized for a slight difference between the wordings of the options.
Critics say that Option A and C are not substitutable because the total amount of people wasn’t stated.
The participants didn’t know there were a total of 600 people involved in the two options mentioned, and this may have affected their choice.
How It’s Used In Marketing
So how can the framing effect be applied to your advertisements?
Well, it’s not really about how it can be applied, but more so what you have to be careful of.
With this theory, we learned that how statements are framed can influence how a person reacts to them.
So, just be cognizant of how you write your ads.
You should also be aware of what type of reaction you want to get from your audience and what type of framing (positive/negative) works best for them.
So, there you have it. Have you ever used the framing effect in your ads? Or have you noticed this effect in use before?