Social cues and framing effects in risky decisions among Chinese military students

The present study examines how Chinese military undergraduates respond to social and verbal cues in making decisions. In Experiment 1, we used the 'Asian disease' problem and found that the framing effect was significant but without risk preference reversal. The participants were fisk-seeking under both framing conditions. In Experiment 2, we examined the robustness of the effects of social cues. Consistent with previous findings, the results showed that except for verbal description, the number of lives at risk was indeed a social cue which could affect the participants' risky preference, and that the participants were more sensitive to the small (vs large) group context. Moreover, in each task, balanced framing was designed, as an objective baseline of risk preference in different scenarios, to help us understand the mere effects of positive or negative framing on choice preference.