University of California, San Diego
The Department of Psychology is Honored
to Present a Talk by
Craig McKenzie
University of California, San Diego
"FRAMING EFFECTS AND RATIONALITY"
Presented on September 25, 2003
Location: The Crick Conference Room
McGill Hall Annex, room 3545
- Abstract:
- Framing effects occur when "equivalent" redescriptions of objects or
outcomes lead to different preferences or judgments. For example, a
medical treatment will be seen more favorably when it is described as
resulting in "75% survival" than "25% mortality." Such effects are widely
considered to be classic violations of rationality. However, if framing
effects are to be considered irrational, it is not sufficient that the
frames in question be logically equivalent. Instead, they must be
information equivalent, which means that no choice-relevant inferences can
be drawn from the speaker's choice of frame. However, logically equivalent
frames used by researchers are often information non-equivalent. For
example, we have shown that a speaker's choice of attribute frame "leaks"
information about relative abundance. This information leakage furnishes a
natural explanation for the most robust finding in attribute framing,
namely, the valence-consistent shift. Extensions of the information leakage
approach to framing effects in risky choice and in inference tasks are
discussed.
- About the Speaker:
- I am a cognitive psychologist interested in inference, uncertainty, and choice. Most of my recent research explains errors people purportedly make in the laboratory by (a) adopting a different (usually Bayesian) normative approach to the task of interest and (b) taking into account the typical structure of the environment. I often find that "errors" are the result of people behaving as (qualitative) Bayesians who make reasonable assumptions about task parameters that reflect how the world usually works. I don't claim that people never make mistakes, only that people's behavior is much richer, more interesting -- and often more rational -- than usually depicted in the judgment-and-decision-making literature.
For More Information About This Speaker:
- http://psy.ucsd.edu/~mckenzie
Dr. McKenzie's website.
