Framing Effect

Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman identified the framing effect in their landmark 1981 paper "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice," published in Science. Their famous "Asian Disease" experiment demonstrated that people's decisions change depending on how options are framed, even when logically identical. When choices were framed positively as gains, most preferred a certain gain over a probable gain; when framed negatively as losses, people chose an uncertain loss over an inevitable loss. The effect exemplifies prospect theory, showing that losses loom larger than equivalent gains and that framing predictably shifts preferences.