The chapter on framing by Tversky and Kahneman (1982) demonstrates that normatively inconsequential changes in the formulation of choice problems significantly affect preferences. These effects are noteworthy because they are sizable (sometimes complete reversals of preference), because they violate important tenets of rationality, and because they influence not only behavior but how the consequences of behavior are experienced. These perturbations are traced (in prospect theory; see Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) to the interaction between the manner in which acts, contingencies, and outcomes are framed in decision problems and general propensities for treating values and uncertainty in nonlinear ways.

The present chapter begins by providing additional demonstrations of framing effects. Next, it extends the concept of framing to effects induced by changes of response mode, and it illustrates effects due to the interaction between response mode and information-processing considerations. Two specific response modes are studied in detail: judgments of single objects and choices among two or more options. Judgments are prone to influence by anchoring- and adjustment-processes, which ease the strain of integrating diverse items of information. Choices are prone to context effects that develop as a result of justification processes, through which the deliberations preceding choice are woven into a rationalization of that action. As we shall see, these processes often cause judgments and choices to be inconsistent with one another.