Fairness as a social cue and verbal framing in risky choices: An examination of the ambiguity and ambivalence hypothesis
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Fairness as a social cue and verbal framing in risky choices: An examination of the ambiguity and ambivalence hypothesis Yuexia Mai 1 & Chen Chen 1 & Yanjun Zhang 2 & Wei Xiao 1 & Hao Sun 3 & Danmin Miao 1 & Jiaxi Peng 4
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract This research explores how fairness, as a social cue, affects one’s preference when making a choice between differently framed outcomes. To achieve this, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, we analyzed how the perception of fairness embedded in options for addressing a life-or-death problem (based on the Asian disease problem), framed either in terms of lives saved or lives lost, affects behavioral decision making. As existing data suggests that perceived fairness may mediate the effect the framing of a situation has on the decision made. In Study 2, we manipulated the fairness perception of “sure” options in order to investigate how participants’ choice preferences would consequently vary. We found that the framing effect only occurred when the distribution method was fair; it did not occur for distribution methods that were less fair. This result suggests that people assign differing priorities to social and verbal cues; when making the Asian disease problem decision, participants set the social cue of fairness as a high priority. We also found that verbal framing of choice outcomes as secondary cues is more effective in cases when using primary cues leads to conflicting preferences; this is consistent with the prediction of the ambiguity and ambivalence hypothesis, which provides an approach for exploring the social context mechanisms underlying inconsistency and bias when making risky choices. Keywords Fairness perception . Framing effect . Ambiguity and ambivalence hypothesis . Decision cues
Introduction Research into the impact of the framing effect on human judgment and decision making has drawn a great deal of attention since Tversky and Kahneman, in their seminal 1981 article, described the phenomenon using the Asian disease problem (Tversky and Kahneman 1981). In this problem, research participants were asked to imagine the scenario that “the US is preparing for an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed.” The expected * Danmin Miao [email protected] * Jiaxi Peng [email protected] 1
Department of Military Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, China
2
Tibet Academy of Social Science, Lhasa, China
3
Army Logistics University of PLA, Chongqing, China
4
College of Teachers, Chengdu University, Chengdu, China, Chengdu, China
outcomes of the programs were then framed (presented) differently. In the positive-framing condition, the participants were presented with two plans: “if Plan A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If Plan B is adopted, there is a onethird chance that all 600 people will be saved and a twothirds chance that none of them will be saved.” When asked to make a
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