Framing of Numerical Quantities
نویسنده
چکیده
Judgments and decisions are dependent upon the information available. They are also dependent upon the way the information is presented. Message characteristics that make recipients willing to endorse a message have been discussed within the rhetoric tradition and studied empirically in the psychology of persuasion (Cialdini, 2007), advertising (Armstrong, 2010), and health communication (Berry, 2004). The focus of this chapter is messages describing numerical quantities. Numbers are, in our culture, associated with objectivity, and seem as such to bypass the issue of rhetoric and subjective interpretations. Although we may discuss whether a beer bottle is blue or green, whether its contents are strong or weak, or whether the consumer is a heavy drinker, the facts remain that the wave length of the color is 590 nm, the beer contains 4.5% alcohol, and the beer drinker’s daily intake of alcohol amounts to three units. But even these, apparently factual and neutral descriptions can be rephrased in ways that make them appear more or less impressive. The beer can be described as being 95.5% alcohol free (hardly worth drinking), and the drinker as consuming “more than 1,000 units” per year, perhaps suggesting a problem. Efficient versus biased ways of presenting quantitative information have been discussed extensively by risk communicators (Gigerenzer, 2002), statisticians (Huff, 1954), and experts on graphical displays (Tufte, 1983), suggesting that quantitative messages are not exempt from contextual influences but can be made more or less impactful depending on perspective and presentation format. Seemingly interchangeable ways of expressing the same quantity have been described as frames, whereas framing effects are said to occur whenever these ways are shown to make a difference.
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