| Abstract: | Subjects were asked to make evaluations in each of three tasks—a gambling task, a consumer judgment task, and a student evaluation task. Each task involved two important attributes, but information about one attribute was missing on some trials. Half of the subjects received a version of the task in which a key attribute was presented in positive terms (e.g., probability of winning a gamble) and half received a version in which that same attribute was presented in negative terms (e.g., probability of losing a gamble). Even though the information was objectively equivalent in the two versions of each task, there were two significant framing effects. (1) In all tasks, responses to two-attribute stimuli were more favorable in the positive condition than in the negative condition. (2) When the key attribute was missing, evaluations of one-attribute stimuli relative to evaluations of two-attribute stimuli were lower in the positive condition than in the negative condition. Results were discussed in terms of the constructs of prospect theory and information integration theory. |
