NEED FOR COGNITION AND CHOICE FRAMING EFFECTS

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that framing biases in decision making would affect more strongly individuals with relatively low leve ls of need for cognition (NC). Participants were classified as high or low NC based on responses to a standard scale and subsequently were e xposed to one of two framings of a choice problem. Different choice pr oblems were used in each experiment, modeled after those developed by Kahneman and Tversky. Experiment 1 employed a monetary task and Experi ment 2 a medical decision-making task. Consistent with expectations, f raming effects on choice were observed in both experiments, but only f or low NC participants. High NC participants were unaffected by proble m framing, showing that they were less susceptible to attempts to alte r their frame of reference.