Social cues and verbal framing in risky choice

We examined how people use social and verbal cues of differing priorities in making social decisions. In Experiment 1, formally identical life-death choice problems were presented in different hypothetical group contexts and were phrased in either a positive or negative frame. The risk-seeking choice became more dominant as the number of kin in an endangered group increased. Framing effects occurred only in a heterogeneous group context where the lives at risk were a mixture of kin and strangers. No framing effect was found when the same problem was presented in the context of a homogeneous group consisting of either all kin or all strangers. We viewed the framing effects to be a sign of indecisive risk preference due to the differential effects of a kinship cue and a stranger cue on choice. In Experiment 2, we presented the life-death problem in two artificial group contexts involving either 6 billion human lives or 6 billion extraterrestrial lives. A framing effect was found only in the human context. Two pre-conditions of framing effects appear to be social unfamiliarity of a decision problem and aspiration level of a decision maker. In Experiment 3, we analyzed the direction of the framing effect by balancing the framing. The direction of the framing effect depended on the baseline level of risk preference determined by a specific decision context. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.