The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

by Michael Lewis

When you told people that they had a 90 percent chance of surviving surgery, 82 percent of patients opted for surgery. But when you told them that they had a 10 percent chance of dying from the surgery—which was of course just a different way of putting the same odds—only 54 percent chose the surgery.

People did not choose between things. They chose between descriptions of things.