Psychologycalendar_todayLast updated: Apr 2026
What is Framing Effect?
/ˈfreɪmɪŋ ɪˈfekt/
The framing effect is when people react differently to the same choice depending on how it's presented to them. Your decision changes based on whether information is framed as a gain or a loss, even though the facts are identical.
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Everyday Example
A surgery described as having a '90% survival rate' sounds safer than one with a '10% mortality rate'—even though they mean exactly the same thing.
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“Netflix frames cancellation differently to different users: some see 'pause your membership' (soft framing) while others see 'permanently delete account' (hard framing), resulting in different cancellation rates.”
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Did you know?
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky discovered the framing effect in 1981, which earned Kahneman the Nobel Prize and fundamentally changed how economists view human decision-making.
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Key Insight
The way a choice is worded can be more powerful than the actual facts underlying that choice.
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