Framing effect

The framing effect is a cognitive bias in which choices or judgments change when equivalent information is presented in different ways.

Prospect theory: A theory of decision-making under risk in which people evaluate outcomes relative to reference points and weigh losses more heavily than gains. Its reference dependence and loss aversion explain why gain and loss frames can produce different choices.
Asian disease problem: A decision problem in which people choose between certain and risky treatments for a hypothetical disease outbreak. Its gain and loss versions famously produced different preferences despite equivalent outcomes.
Daniel Kahneman: An Israeli-American psychologist whose research on judgment and decision-making earned the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His collaboration with Tversky developed the framework that explained framing-related choices.
Description–experience gap: The difference between decisions based on described probabilities and decisions based on probabilities learned through experience. It concerns how information is acquired, rather than equivalent descriptions of the same information.
Reference point: A comparison standard against which an outcome is judged as a gain or a loss. Frames can make different outcomes the implicit baseline for judging the same options.
Tversky and Kahneman's 1981 framing experiment: An experiment showing that responses to the Asian disease problem changed when outcomes were framed as lives saved or lives lost. It established a canonical demonstration of the effect using mathematically equivalent choices.
Amos Tversky: An Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist known for research on judgment, decision-making, and heuristics. His experiments with Kahneman made framing a central finding in behavioral decision research.
Anchoring effect: A bias in which an initial value influences later estimates or judgments. Anchoring depends on an initial reference value, not principally on alternative wording of equivalent outcomes.
Loss aversion: The tendency for losses to have greater psychological impact than equivalent gains. Negative wording can make a possible loss loom larger than an equivalent gain.
Save-versus-die framing: A presentation contrast that describes the same survival outcome as either people saved or people who die. It makes the gain–loss reversal in the Asian disease problem explicit.

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