The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

by David Robson

There is also framing: the fact that you may change your opinion based on the way information is phrased. Suppose you are considering a medical treatment for 600 people with a deadly illness and it has a 1 in 3 success rate. You can be told either that ‘200 people will be saved using this treatment’ (the gain framing) or that ‘400 people will die using this treatment’ (the loss framing). The statements mean exactly the same thing, but people are more likely to endorse the statement when it is presented in the gain framing; they passively accept the facts as they are given to them without thinking what they really mean. Advertisers have long known this: it’s the reason that we are told that foods are 95 per cent fat free (rather than being told they are ‘5 per cent fat’).