Moderating Effect of Group Cue While Processing News on Immigration: Is the Framing Effect a Heuristic Process?

People find positive attribute frames (e.g., 75% lean) more persuasive than negative ones (e.g., 25% fat). In three pre-registered experiments, we tested whether this effect would be magnified by using verbal quantifiers instead of numerical ones (e.g., ‘high % lean’ vs. ‘75% lean’). This moderating effect of quantifier format was predicted based on previous empirical work and two non-exclusive accounts of framing effects. First, verbal quantifiers are presumed to be a more intuitive format than numerical quantifiers, so might predispose people more to judgement biases such as the framing effect. Second, verbal quantifiers draw a greater focus to the attributes they describe. This could provide a linguistic signal that the positive frame is better than the negative one. In three experiments, we manipulated the attribute frame (positive or negative) and the quantifier format (verbal or numerical) between-subjects, and quantity pairs (e.g., 5% fat and 95% lean or 25% fat and 75% lean) within-subjects. We also tested if participants focused more on the attributes in the frame, by measuring whether participants selected causal sentence completions about the beef that focused on why it had fat meat or lean meat. Results showed a robust framing effect, which was partially mediated by the focus of the sentence completions. However, the verbal format did not increase the magnitude of the framing effect. These results suggest that a focus on the attribute contributes to the framing effect, but contrary to past work, this focus is not different between verbal and numerical quantifiers.

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Characteristics of quantifiers moderate the framing effect

10.31234/osf.io/6wjzm ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Dawn Liu Holford ◽

Marie Juanchich ◽

Miroslav Sirota

Keyword(s):

Framing Effect ◽

Moderating Effect ◽

Mixed Design ◽

Within Subjects ◽

Equivalent Description

The attribute framing effect, where people judge a quantity of an item more positively with a positively-described attribute (e.g., ‘75% lean’) than its negative, albeit normatively equivalent description (e.g., ‘25% fat’), is a robust phenomenon, which may be moderated under certain conditions. In this paper, we investigated the moderating effect of the characteristics of the quantifier term: its format (verbal, e.g., ‘high’, or numerical, e.g., ‘75%’) and magnitude (i.e., if it is a small or large quantity) using positive or negative synonyms of attributes (e.g., energy vs. calories). Over five pre-registered studies using a 2 (synonym, between-subjects: positive or negative) 2 (quantifier format, between-subjects: verbal or numerical) 2 (quantifier magnitude, within-subjects: small or large) mixed design, we manipulated quantifier format and magnitude orthogonally for synonyms with differing valence. We also tested two mechanisms for the framing effect: whether the effect was mediated by the affect associated with the frame, and whether participants inferred the speaker to be positive about the target. We found a framing effect with synonyms that was reversed in direction for the small (vs. large) quantifiers, but not significantly moderated by quantifier format. Both the affect associated with the frame and the inferred level of speaker positivity partially mediated the framing effect, and the level of mediation varied with quantifier magnitude. These results suggest that the magnitude of the quantifier modifies one’s evaluation of the frame, and the mechanism for people’s evaluations in a framing situation may differ for small and large quantifiers.

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