Framing Effects in Decision-Making under Time Pressure

Author(s):

Laura R Marusich and Jonathan Z Bakdash

Abstract:

Soldiers are continuously required to engage in decision-making based on uncertain information. We use a simulated military-relevant behavioral task to evaluate the influence of time pressure on framing effects in decision-making under uncertainty. Typical framing effects are a tendency to be risk-averse when the decision is framed in terms of gains and risk-seeking when the decision is framed in terms of losses. Prior research using hypothetical vignette-based decisions suggests that framing effects may reverse under time pressure. Here, we use a more concrete behavioral task with repeated trials for decisions and feedback on decision outcomes. Our findings did not show confirmatory evidence for either typical framing effects or for risk reversal under time pressure. We describe exploratory findings suggesting that these unexpected results may be explained by multiple differences for descriptive versus experience-based decision-making tasks. We discuss our confirmatory and exploratory findings in the context of the recent literature on framing effects and suggest avenues of future research to disentangle these methodological differences and their influence on framing effects.