frames and rationality Flashcards
what are the 2 standards of rationality?
- sensitivity to relevant info
- consistency
what is sensitivity to relevant info?
ability to make judgments and decisions that are sensitive to probabilities of critical events and usefulness of evidence
what is consistency?
in equivalent situations, given the same information, people should make equivalent decisions
is it true that people seem to make different decisions about the same information, depending on how the problem is framed?
YES
what happens during framing and decisions - 2 conditions question?
- statements in conditions are logically equivalent to each other
- YET, people prefer the certain option when framed in ‘lives saved’, and uncertain option when framed in ‘lives lost’
what happens during framing and decisions: 2 conditions question - what frames where the 2 conditions?
- condition 1 = survival frame
- condition 2 = mortality frame
what should happen if people behave rationally?
- if people are behaving rationally, then logically equivalent situations should lead to equivalent choices, decisions, and evaluations
- judgements instead seem to be influenced by superficial aspects of the framing of a problem, rather than being based solely on the essential information given
what is the effect of a reference point?
- reference points can reliably influence speakers’ frame selection
- frames therefore must carry information beyond their literal content
- frames that are logically equivalent might convey different information
- specifically, the selected frame would provide evidence of the speaker’s reference point
what are conversational implicatures?
- things implied by utterances, but not explicitly stated
- e.g., “John walked into a house yesterday and saw a tortoise”
- implication is that the house was not John’s and he saw a tortoise in the house, after walking in
- we make pragmatic assumptions when people speak to us
- listeners use these to make inferences about the broader context and meaning of what people say
what are Grice’s 4 maxims?
relevant, concise, honest, clear
how do speakers do framing and therefore “informational leakage”?
- speakers don’t arbitrarily choose one frame versus another (logically equivalent) one
- different frames are chosen depending on the speaker’s reference point
- in choosing one frame versus another, the speaker is ‘leaking’ information about his/her reference point without actually explicitly referring to it
- this means that the speaker may be implicitly communicating information about his/her evaluation of the current situation (e.g., it’s got better or worse) relative to an unstated reference point
how do speakers tend to choose frames?
- speakers tend to choose a frame that refers to the attribute that has increased from the reference point to the current situation
- if the glass start empty, then it becomes increasingly full = “HALF-FULL”
- if the glass starts full, then it becomes increasingly empty = “HALF-EMPTY”
what are valenced logically equivalent frames?
speakers tend to choose a frame that refers to the attribute that has increased from the reference point to the current situation
what is the effect of framing effects and rationality?
- if speakers choose between logically equivalent ways of framing a situation in an informative way
- and if listeners are sensitive to this tendency of speakers
- then changing your judgement depending on the frame used is rational (i.e., you’re using all the information available to you)
- unknown reference points/implicatures makes studying rationality very hard as you don’t necessarily know how participants understand a question
a different frame implicates … ?
a different evaluation of the situation
