This article reexamines the assumptions underlying the disease problem used by Tversky and Kahneman (1981) to illustrate gain– loss formulation effects. It is argued that their reported effect may have been due to asymmetries in the ambiguity of the sure and risky prospects and to the entanglement of two distinct types of formulation manipulations: one having to do with the expected outcomes that are made explicit (positive vs negative) and the other having to do with the descriptors used to convey the relevant expected outcomes (lives saved/not saved vs lives lost/not lost). Two experiments using a formally equivalent problem in which these confounds were eliminated revealed no significant predictive effect of either descriptor or outcomes frames on choice, although a marginally significant framing effect was obtained in Experiment 1 when the signs of the two framing manipulations were congruent. Implications for prospect theory are discussed. � 2001 Academic Press Key Words: framing effects; formulation effects; choice; gains and losses. Pessimists see the wine glass half empty, optimists see it half full. As this adage of lay personology suggests, the same event may be viewed in different ways by different people. Moreover, sometimes each of these alternative perspectives are objectively correct. A wine glass half empty is a wine glass half

Framing is a potentially useful paradigm for examining the strategic creation of public relations messages and audience responses. Based on a literature review across disciplines, this article identifies 7 distinct types of framing applicable to public relations. These involve the framing of situations, attributes, choices, actions, issues, responsibility, and news. Potential applications for public relations practice and research are discussed. Public relations can be examined from a variety of frameworks, including systems, critical, and rhetorical perspectives (Toth, 1992). The rhetorical approach focuses on how public relations is engaged in the construction of messages and meanings that are intended to influence key publics important to an organization. Rhetorical theory encompasses a wide range of approaches, including argumentation, advocacy and persuasion, corporate communication, dialectics and discourse, dramatism and storytelling, information, organizing, public opinion, and reputation management. Yet, none of these approaches represents a comprehensive foundation for fully understanding the processes or consequences of public relations. Another theoretically rich approach that offers the potential of subsuming and tying together many of these seemingly unrelated approaches involves framing theory. Framing has been used as a paradigm for understanding and investigating communication and related behavior in a wide range of disciplines (Rendahl, 1995). These include psychology, speech communication (especially discourse

this technical report can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. This technical report may be cited in academic works without permission of the publisher. 3

Expert judgements are routine in biosecurity risk analysis. This report reviews methods for eliciting probabilities, quantities, and conceptual models. It defines ‘expert’ status, reviews the literature on biases and heuristics in expert judgements and outlines methods for detecting and eliciting values, attitudes and motivations. The report describes direct and indirect techniques for eliciting point estimates and uncertainties for quantities, frequencies and probabilities, and for eliciting the structure of conceptual models. It evaluates the use of language-based risk categories and describes methods to detect and adjust for bias and variability in expert judgements. Feedback and training are likely to make useful additions to elicitation protocols. Few of the formal techniques for elicitation, calibration or verification have been evaluated in conditions typical of biosecurity risk analysis, creating an opportunity to test

In this paper we examine the role of social and organizational knowledge in managerial decision-making. In a series of experiments, we examined the following questions. (1) How are some implicit organizational variables such as the size of a group and the composition of a group related to risk perception and risky decisions? From a Darwinian perspective, humans have lived in small, nomadic, hunter-gatherers' groups throughout almost the entire evolutionary time. In making decisions at risk, the size of the group thus may serve as a cue signalling the structure and functions of a social group (e.g., kinship, reciprocity, interdependence among group members). To investigate the effects of these organizational variables, Wang (1996a, 1996b, 2001) used a well-known example of irrational decisions, framing effects (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981), as an empirical probe. Framing effects, characterized by an irrational reversal in risk preference due to different ways of presenting / framing the same choice outcomes, appeared only in large group contexts but disappeared in small group and kinship group contexts. Evolutionarily recurrent small group contexts (less than 1000 people) eliminated irrational reversal in risk preference. (2) Would risky choices between a sure option and a gamble of equal expected value vary as a function of the types of information provided in a decision problem? In contrast to verbal framing (e.g., presenting the same choice outcomes as if they are gains or as if they are losses), situational information about the real status of an organization should have independent reflection effects on risky choice. This so called reflection effect has been repeatedly shown in the literature, where people tend to be risk averse in gain situations but risk seeking in l...

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to X.T. Wang, Psychology Department,

A meta-analysis of Asian disease-like studies is presented to identify the factors which determine risk preference. First the confoundings between probability levels, payoffs, and framing conditions are clarified in a task analysis. Then the role of framing, reflection, probability, type, and size of payoff, is evaluated in a meta-analysis. It is shown that bidirectional framing effects exist for gains and for losses. Presenting outcomes as gains tends to induce risk aversion while presenting outcomes as losses tends to induce risk seeking. Risk preference is also shown to depend on the size of the payoffs, on the probability levels, and on the type of good at stake (money/property vs. human lives). In general, higher payoffs lead to increasing risk aversion. Higher probabilities lead to increasing risk aversion for gains and to increasing risk seeking for losses. These findings are confirmed by a subsequent empirical test. Shortcomings of existing formal theories, such as Prospect theory, Cumulative prospect theory, Venture theory, and Markowitz's utility theory are identified. It is shown that it is not probabilities or payoffs, but the framing condition which explains most variance. These findings are interpreted as showing that no linear combination of formally relevant predictors is sufficient to capture the essence of the framing phenomenon.