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How to Reduce the Effect of Framing on Messages About Health

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ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND

Patients must be informed about risks before any treatment can be implemented. Yet serious problems in communicating these risks occur because of framing effects.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the effects of different information frames when communicating health risks to people with high and low numeracy and determine whether these effects can be countered or eliminated by using different types of visual displays (i.e., icon arrays, horizontal bars, vertical bars, or pies).

DESIGN

Experiment on probabilistic, nationally representative US (n = 492) and German (n = 495) samples, conducted in summer 2008.

OUTCOME MEASURES

Participants’ risk perceptions of the medical risk expressed in positive (i.e., chances of surviving after surgery) and negative (i.e., chances of dying after surgery) terms.

KEY RESULTS

Although low‐numeracy people are more susceptible to framing than those with high numeracy, use of visual aids is an effective method to eliminate its effects. However, not all visual aids were equally effective: pie charts and vertical and horizontal bars almost completely removed the effect of framing. Icon arrays, however, led to a smaller decrease in the framing effect.

CONCLUSIONS

Difficulties with understanding numerical information often do not reside in the mind, but in the representation of the problem.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Anita Todd for editing the manuscript. This study is part of two projects, “Helping people with low numeracy to understand medical information,” funded by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making (US) and the Max Planck Society (Germany), and “How to improve understanding of risks about health (PSI2008-02019),” funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain).

Conflict of Interests

None disclosed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Rocio Garcia-Retamero PhD & Mirta Galesic PhD

  2. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Rocio Garcia-Retamero PhD

  3. Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Campus Universitario de Cartuja s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Rocio Garcia-Retamero PhD

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  1. Rocio Garcia-Retamero PhD
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  2. Mirta Galesic PhD
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Correspondence to Rocio Garcia-Retamero PhD.

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Garcia-Retamero, R., Galesic, M. How to Reduce the Effect of Framing on Messages About Health. J GEN INTERN MED 25, 1323–1329 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-010-1484-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-010-1484-9

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