Decision-Making Traps Part 5: The Framing Trap

In our previous post in this series, we introduced “The Hidden Traps in Decision Making” by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa, in which they describe six traps in organizational decision-making that can adversely affect performance. This week’s post covers the fifth trap, the “The Framing Trap” which states that the way a problem is framed can profoundly influence the choices one makes. Research proves that people are risk averse when a problem is posed in terms of gains, but risk seeking when a problem is posed in terms of avoiding losses.

Big Sky sees this trap in our clients especially when executives consciously or unconsciously frame the problem such that their proposed solution seems to be the best answer. Also, executives might focus on highlighting their pain areas which might not be a pain area for somebody else.

Techniques to overcome:

1. Don’t automatically accept the initial frame, try posing problems in a neutral redundant way that combines the gains and losses or embraces different reference points
2. Think hard throughout your decision-making process about the framing of the problem, and when others recommend decisions, examine the way they framed the problem.

Our next post in this series will discuss the “Estimating and Forecasting Trap” outlined in the article.