Is a picture worth a thousand words? The interaction of visual display and attribute representation in attenuating framing bias
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2013, Vol 8, Issue 4
Abstract
The attribute framing bias is a well-established phenomenon, in which an object or an event is evaluated more favorably when presented in a positive frame such as “the half full glass” than when presented in the complementary negative framing. Given that previous research showed that visual aids can attenuate this bias, the current research explores the factors underlying the attenuating effect of visual aids. In a series of three experiments, we examined how attribute framing bias is affected by two factors: (a) The display mode—verbal versus visual; and (b) the representation of the critical attribute—whether one outcome, either the positive or the negative, is represented or both outcomes are represented. In Experiment 1 a marginal attenuation of attribute framing bias was obtained when verbal description of either positive or negative information was accompanied by corresponding visual representation. In Experiment 2 similar marginal attenuation was obtained when both positive and negative outcomes were verbally represented. In Experiment 3, where the verbal description represented both positive and negative outcomes, significant attenuation was obtained when it was accompanied by a visual display that represented a single outcome, and complete attenuation, totally eliminating the framing bias, was obtained when it was accompanied by a visual display that represented both outcomes. Thus, our findings showed that interaction between the display mode and the representation of the critical attribute attenuated the framing bias. Theoretical and practical implications of the interaction between verbal description, visual aids and representation of the critical attribute are discussed, and future research is suggested.
Authors and Affiliations
Eyal Gamliel and Hamutal Kreiner
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP678084
- DOI -
- Views 126
- Downloads 0
Consumers can make decisions in as little as a third of a second
We make hundreds of decisions every day, many of them extremely quickly and without much explicit deliberation. This motivates two important open questions: What is the minimum time required to make choices with above ch...
To trade or not to trade: The moderating role of vividness when exchanging gambles
Individuals are generally reluctant to trade goods—a phenomenon identified as the endowment effect. This paper focuses on consumers’ puzzling reluctance to exchange gambles, and in particular lottery tickets with identic...
Are patient decision aids effective? Insight from revisiting the debate between correspondence and coherence theories of judgment
Research endeavors to determine the effectiveness of patient decision aids (PtDAs) have yielded mixed results. The conflicting evaluations are largely due to the different metrics used to assess the validity of judgments...
The impact of actively open-minded thinking on social media communication
Online, social media communication is often ambiguous, and it can encourage speed and inattentiveness. We investigated whether Actively Open Minded Thinking (AOT), a dispositional willingness to seek out new or potential...
Description-based and experience-based decisions: individual analysis
We analyze behavior in two basic classes of decision tasks: description-based and experience-based. In particular, we compare the prediction power of a number of decision learning models in both kinds of tasks. Unlike mo...