How you say matters more than what you say 😎 — Framing effect
Same-things different-meanings, being bizarre, and smart framing.
Selamat pagi (Good morning in Bahasa Malaysia) ☀️
My family and I are in Langkawi this week for a holiday. I bring you week 6 of this newsletter straight from this lush green 🌳, culturally rich island with clear waters and beautiful beaches 🏝.
As you know by now, we learn to dodge a cognitive bias each week. In case this is your first email from me, please check out prior editions here:
Week 1 — I see only what I believe 👀—Confirmation bias
Week 2 — I knew it all along 🤓—Hindsight bias
Week 3 — Gullible, me? No way! 🤷🏻♀️— Anchoring bias
Week 4 — Happy times ahead 🌈 — Optimism Bias
Week 5 — Off the top of my head 💭 — Availability bias
If you’re more of a listener than a reader, stay tuned for the audio version coming tomorrow. I’ll send you an email asa it’s up.
Jumping on to the mental mistake of the week, the Framing Effect.
Growing up, my dad always said that it’s not about what you say but how you say it.
He loved giving an example (below) to make us (I and my siblings) understand this better. Note how changing the word you emphasize (in italics below) changes what the listener interprets (in curly brackets below).
Are you heading out to buy eggplant? {Why eggplant of all veggies 🤢, why not something better?}
Are you heading out to buy eggplant? {Why don’t you grow it in your spacious backyard as I do?}
Are you heading out to buy eggplant? {I thought you’d be back by now. What’s taking you so long to leave?}
How you frame it is how others perceive it.
Just like a frame draws attention to its picture 🖼, you can frame your thoughts to highlight your perspective.
Emphasizing words is just one way of framing. Framing can also be visual.
Different fonts can convey different meanings, spooky or loving, like in the example below:
The same options can be presented in a way to make it sound better:
While shopping, which one is more appealing—30% off 🤩 or pay 70% 😟?
4/5 dentists recommend a toothpaste is more appealing than saying 1/5 do not recommend it.
If you’re trying to cut down on fat, which yogurt would you rather buy, 20% fat or 80% fat-free?
You can invoke a different emotional response by presenting the same information in a different way. No one understands this better than sales, advertising, and branding folks out there.
Our decisions and emotions are influenced all the time by how the information is presented to us.
The mental mistake of making a decision based entirely on how the information is presented to us is called the framing effect.
Framing can drastically impact our decision-making ability. Its effects can be conscious or unconscious.
If you want to be an independent thinker, you need more control over your decisions. To make smarter decisions and influence others, let’s unpack some mind tricks:
Be bizarre
Do you remember something that your 4th-grade teacher told you in his/her unique way instead of what was written in the boring textbook?
It’s called the Bizarreness effect.
Our brain follows two steps to remember something: encoding the new information, and recalling later when needed.
The better the encoding, the better the recall.
Novelty speeds up encoding in the brain. Researchers have found that distinct information is more memorable than other pieces of information.
So if you want it to stick, make it weird 😯 or funny 🤣.
Positive framing
What would you pick, 2% failure or 98% success? They are both the same. So are the choices, 70% full price or 30% off.
It’s like a glass half empty or a glass half full. Positive framing is always attractive.
30% off is positive framing because it saves money. 70% full price is negative framing because it emphasizes how much you still need to pay.
It’s a no-brainer to focus on benefits rather than losses. People tend to practice positive framing, consciously or unconsciously.
If you are suffering from the cons of negative framing, you even have the power to change it to positive framing.
I had one tiny bad experience while having breakfast in the resort that we are staying in. It would have stuck with me for the entire holiday but the staff made special efforts to invert my experience.
They offered us free lunch to make up for their mistake. They even prepared and delivered us a special basket made of chocolates and macarons 😍.
Soon, my negative framing of the resort experience turned positive.
Loss aversion
If you don’t want people to choose an option, frame it as a loss. People are loss aversive. They hate losses, even more than they love gains.
If both options are positive, people pick the one that guarantees no loss.
On the other hand, if both options are negative, people become risk-takers.
In an experiment, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman framed the same situation differently for two groups of participants.
They told the participants to imagine an outbreak of a disease. There are two programs that can combat the disease, program A and program B.
Group 1 of participants was offered these choices:
In program A, 200 people will be saved.
In program B, it’s a 1/3 chance that everyone will be saved.
Group 2 of participants was offered these choices:
In program A, 400 people will die.
In program B, it’s a 1/3 chance that no one will die.
If you look closely, the first options in both scenarios are identical. So are the second options.
Yet, most people in group 1 chose the first option. Most people in group 2 chose the second option.
When framed in terms of ‘saving lives’ (positive framing), people grab on to the safe option.
When framed in terms of ‘people dying’ (negative framing), people chose the riskier option.
What’s worrying is that the public health professionals, people who are in charge of vaccines and health programs also fell for the framing effect.
When making big decisions, it’s important we take a moment to evaluate the options and not fall for positive or negative framing of facts.
There’s a class of people that get pulled to the riskier option more than others. Any guesses who would that be? 😉
Why are teenagers bigger risk-takers?
Most people don’t like to take big risks because they can predict the big dangers involved. But, there are those who like to take big risks. They fail to acknowledge the chances of failure.
Teenagers have a reputation for risky behavior.
It’s because the parts of the brain that process rewards are fully developed whereas the parts of the brain assessing risk are still developing. They tend to make decisions based on rewards, not based on the dangers involved.
How you frame an idea to a teenager can change the way they decide to act upon it. They can’t see the risks involved so it’s important to highlight the risks for them in BIG BOLD words.
If someone you know has a business idea that ‘can’t fail’ or an investment opportunity that’s ‘100% risk-free’, it’s time to bring them back to earth. Help them see the dangers involved before they make a decision.
Sometimes, it’s not enough to highlight. You must criticize to clearly communicate your idea. Then what?
Welcome peaceful accusations.
Peaceful accusations
As a kid, I remember listening more to my teachers rather than to my parents!
As a parent, I know my kids listen more to their teachers than they listen to us 😅.
If kids are doing something wrong, the way parents point out the mistake and the way teachers do it is totally different. Both want kids to realize their mistakes but the framing differs.
Changing the way you frame the criticism makes a huge difference in how it’s taken.
Teachers are skilled in peaceful accusations.
e.g., Instead of “You did the Math exercise all wrong” say, “The Math exercise wasn’t done well”.
Instead of saying, “You have no idea how to clean the room”, say “Your room is still messy.”
Instead of criticizing the person, criticize the action. It sounds like a very little difference in wordings but it helps soften the blow!
Unlike normal criticism, with peaceful accusations, they don’t feel the need to defend themselves. Instead, they can keep their focus on the right thing, that is, correcting their mistake.
Bring in options
There are times when people are stuck. Either there’s too much to tell and they don’t know where to start (an excited kid back from an adventure) or they are too sad/tired/shocked from a situation.
If your friends, colleagues, subordinates, or kids are having a difficult time framing a situation, you can help by offering them a framework.
When people don’t know where to start, offer them options.
I realize you can’t finish the report in the next hour. You can either ask for more time or narrow down the scope.
Providing choices can be a good ice breaker as well as an easy start.
Framing things broadly
How we frame problems in our minds influences how efficiently we can resolve them.
Most times, it helps to see the bigger picture.
You can make smarter decisions with a broader view of things. By not treating a problem like it’s the only problem, we can live happier lives.
“Narrow framing is one of the biggest weaknesses of human decision-making.”
—Daniel Kahneman
In the bigger scheme of things, tiny problems don’t really matter much. In the bigger scheme of things, we realize most problems were tiny.