Research On Decision Maker's Framing Effect Under Paroxysmal Events

In recent years, more and more paroxysmal events have been happening frequently all over the world, especially in China, the country with a huge number of people during the period of economical and social transition. These events have caused significant damages to lives, properties and social development. Efficient decision making is the key to cope with such events. However, decision makes can hardly avoid framing effect, which means they make different choices on the alternatives with the same utility but various forms of presentations. Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002, discovered framing effect with his collaborator in 1981. As a double edged sword, framing effect has negative effect on decision makers'performance under paroxysmal events, but can also be used properly by media to help decision makers winning public support. Therefore, it is of great value to research decision makers'framing effect under paroxysmal events.In order to understand the framing effect under paroxysmal events more profoundly, there are two important topics to discuss.1) Is there framing effect under paroxysmal events? If so, what is the mechanism of such effect? 2) Whether the decision problem domain (life or commodity), decision maker's gender and emotion influence framing effect? If so, what is the mechanism of such influence? With the purpose to answer these questions, this thesis completes three studies step by step with the decision makers under paroxysmal events as research object.Following the literature, study 1 exerts no explicit time pressure on decision makers, and uses questionnaire to investigate whether framing effect exists and the influence of decision problem domain and decision maker's gender on framing effect. This study is a bridge, making it possible to compare the current conclusions with the literature.Based on study 1, study 2 exerts time pressure explicitly on decision makers, which makes the research circumstances more similar to the reality. This study fulfills two tasks:1) explain the mechanism of framing effect under paroxysmal events with ERP (event-related potentials) experiment both on the behavioral and neural level; 2) study the interactive influence of decision problem domain and decision maker's gender on framing effect under paroxysmal events.Study 3 is a complement to study 2. It focuses on the influence of negative incidental emotion (negative emotion induced by factors out of the current decision problems) on framing effect under paroxysmal events, and explain the mechanism of such influence on the level of decision neuroscience with ERP experiment.We can come to the following important conclusions based on the integration of conclusions from the three studies in this thesis.1) There is framing effect on decision makers under paroxysmal events, resulting in more slowly decision making.2) When the male decision makers are making decisions on lives problems under paroxysmal events, decision time pressure can strengthen the framing effect, drawing the male decision makers who were immune to decision frames into classical framing effect.3) The decision problem domain and gender have interactive effect on framing effect under paroxysmal events. When lives and commodities need rescuing simultaneously, the decision maker doesn't attach enough importance to the commodities regardless of the gender. In contrast, lives saving problems induce higher decision motivation, leading classical framing effect in male decision makers and unidirectional framing effect of risk seeking in the females.4) Facing lives saving problems, the females are more prone to show framing effect and more impulse and risk seeking than male decision makers. Female decision makers show framing effect irrespective of decision time pressure. However, decision time pressure is a prerequisite to the male decision makers'framing effect. When it comes to female decision makers, they usually make intuitive decisions in shorter time, and show higher risk preference than male decision makers. 5) The comprehensive role of P2, N2, P3 and N500 is the neural mechanism for the framing effects under paroxysmal events. The changing of the amplitude of P2, N2, P3 and N500 indicates that there are significant differences of risk perception speed, decision conflict, and decision difficulty and decision makers'uncertainty with their decisions when decision makers make choices between the certain alternative and the risky alternative with the same utility under a certain frame. Due to these reasons, decision makers make different choice on the certain and the risky alternative, causing framing effect.6) The negative incidental emotion strengthens decision makers'risk preference under the negative frame, and such influence can be explained by the changes of the amplitude of P2, N2, P3 and N500. Compared to neutral emotion, when decision makers with negative incidental emotion choose the certain alternative under the positive frame, the amplitude of P2, N2, P3 and N500 decreases, increases, decreases and increases significantly. This means that the risk perception speed, decision conflict, decision difficulty and uncertainty with decision choice of the decision maker increase simultaneously and lead the decision maker more possible to choose risky alternative under the positive frame.As an exploration to framing effect under paroxysmal events mainly with the method of decision neuroscience, this thesis has four innovations.1) Decision time pressure is exerted on decision makers explicitly in this thesis, based on which the strengthening effect of decision time pressure on framing effect for male decision makers facing lives rescuing problems under paroxysmal events is discovered. Decision time pressure has been emphasized as the key factor to distinguish paroxysmal events from normal events in the literature, but no research has exerted decision time pressure explicitly on decision makers before. This thesis overcomes such limitation. It extends the discussion background of the strengthening effect of decision time pressure on framing effect to paroxysmal events, and gives people a deeper understanding of the relationship between decision time pressure and framing effect by finding the interactive role of decision problem domain and decision maker's gender on such relationship.2) The mechanism of framing effect under paroxysmal events is explained under the perspective of brain potentials with ERP experiment in this thesis. The mechanism of framing effect in the domain of investment problems has been explained with fMRI experiment, but the conclusions may not be suitable to paroxysmal events. ERP experiment is more suitable to study decision problems under paroxysmal events than fMRI and is employed by this thesis. Taking the results of P2, N2, P3 and N500 of the ERP experiment and related theories of behavioral decision science together, this thesis reaches a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of framing effect under paroxysmal events. This thesis can also be taken as an example for the application of ERP experiment in the research of decision problems under paroxysmal events.3) The interactive effect between decision problem domain and the decision maker's gender has been found and explained by this thesis. The main effect of decision problem domain and the decision maker's gender has been discussed by scholars in the domain of paroxysmal events, but no research has taken these two factors into account simultaneously. This limitation has been overcome by this thesis. Lives and commodities should be treated separately under paroxysmal events has been suggested. Besides this, female is more impulsive, risk seeking and easier to be influenced by decision frames, which should be paid more attention in the paroxysmal events management.4) The negative incidental emotion has been found to significantly strengthen decision makers'risk preference under the positive frame, and such effect's mechanism is explained by ERP experiment on the neuroscience level in this thesis. The literature discusses the influence of the negative incidental emotion on framing effect only in the domain of consumer purchasing decision. This thesis attaches importance to the prevalence of the negative incidental emotion under paroxysmal events, and conducts an ERP experiment on this topic. Based on the theoretical conclusions, it is suggested that decision makers under paroxysmal events should stay away from media information which is possible to induce the negative incidental emotion as far as possible and be encouraged to trade off the alternatives based on the problem itself.