The power of framing: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it

In March 2016, before Trump was selected as the Republican nominee, cognitive scientist George Lakoff was already concerned about the emerging Trump phenomenon. So he wrote an article called “Understanding Trump” that details the ways in which Trump “uses your brain against you” – and sent it to every member of the Clinton campaign.

Lakoff researches how framing influences reasoning, or how the way we say something often matters much more than what we say. And he has used his research to inform how Democrats can better frame their party positions. He consolidated his advice for Democrats in his book, Don’t think of an elephant! The title conveys one of its main insights: if you negate a frame, you strengthen a frame. In other words, if you say “don’t think of an elephant,” you can’t help but think of one.

Lakoff was worried that we were constantly thinking of elephants in the recent election cycle. Trump’s constant repeating of things like “Crooked Hillary,” according to Lakoff, was strengthening a particular frame, subconsciously causing us to view her in that way.

Because of concerns like these, Lakoff urged the Clinton campaign to follow a strategy akin to Trump’s: constantly repeat your position, and avoid repeating Trump’s false claims. The Clinton campaign’s response? It tried to use Trump’s words against him, releasing a series of commercials showing Trump’s scandals spliced together – giving the public more chances to “think of an elephant.”

Whether the outcome of the election (and our present global climate) would have been different if the Clinton campaign heeded Lakoff’s advice is unknown. Nevertheless, the 2016 election shows us how much framing can play a role in our reasoning and everyday lives. Recent psychological research shows us just how powerful framing can be, and how consistently unaware we are of its effects.

The impact of a frame

Research in framing was spearheaded by classic experiments by Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman and his collaborator Amos Tversky in the 1980s. Their research upended the assumption that humans behave rationally – an assumption that a number of economic models previously rested on. They instead showed that we are often consistently irrational, relying on a number of mental shortcuts to speed up our reasoning, which can make us remarkably sensitive to how things are framed.

But, just how strong is the impact of framing? A recent study showed that, in some contexts, it might have an even stronger effect on our reasoning than our own political views. 

In the study, participants were presented with brief passages about crime in a hypothetical city named Addison. For half of the participants, a few words were altered so that the passage said that crime was a “beast preying” on the city of Addison. For the other half, crime was described as a “virus infecting” the city.

Read more https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2017/jul/20/the-power-of-framing-its-not-what-you-say-its-how-you-say-it

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd