An article on the KELLOG INSIGHT webpage, written by Galen Bodenhausen and Michalis Mamakos, finds that framing a decision in terms of possible losses rather than possible gains leads people to gather more information before making that decision.

New research from the Kellogg School shows that how a decision is framed – whether as a goal you’re eager to achieve or a responsibility that you don’t want to mess up – influences how much information people gather before making that decision.

Across several studies, the researchers found that “we gather more information when decisions are framed in terms of possible losses rather than possible gains, even when acquiring that information is costly. This holds even when we’re gathering information that we know might contradict our own beliefs. “When you make people averse to risk, they’re willing to pay to get more information to make a decision they can be confident about,” says Bodenhausen.

The research is rooted in a psychological concept called regulatory-focus theory, the authors point out. “The idea is that people have one of two different types of motivations for reaching a goal. Broadly speaking, those with a promotion focus are eager to achieve a goal because it offers a chance for self-advancement – a gain – while those with a prevention focus are vigilant about the need to fulfill their obligations, and thus they’re more occupied with what they might lose if they make a bad decision. Prior research has shown that people with a promotion focus are more likely to take risks in their decisions, while prevention-oriented people are more deliberate.”

Roughly 400 online participants were recruited for each of the first two studies and divided into a promotion- or prevention-focused group. They were then presented with a scenario in which a company had to choose one of two products to greenlight. The participant’s job was to guess which product the company picked.

Before doing so, participants were allowed to ask for information to help make their decision. The information might offer insight into the product’s pricing or competitiveness, for example. The two studies were identical except that the cost of information was 10 cents in the first study and just 5 cents in the second.

The language the researchers used to describe the participant’s job varied for the promotion- and prevention-focused groups. The promotion group was told this was a “goal” and that they could earn up to a 70-cent “bonus” for picking the correct choice, minus whatever they spent on information. The prevention group was told this was a “task” and that they would receive a “budget” of 70 cents and would lose money for each piece of information they requested – but they would lose the entire budget if they made the wrong final decision.

Participants could then click on up to five different pieces of information before deciding that they were ready to make their decision.

Across both studies, participants in the prevention group were likely to examine more pieces of information before making a decision – an average of 2 in the prevention group and 1.66 in the promotion group in the first study, and 2.75 versus 2.4 in the second (where information-seeking was a bit cheaper).

This gibed with what the researchers had expected. A prevention focus “makes people more vigilant and careful,” Mamakos says. “They want to play it safer.”

“It’s possible to frame tasks in different ways that activate different priorities,” he says. “The framing has its own impact that is maintained despite these other countervailing concerns of how much information costs or having a preferred outcome.”

For considerably more, check out How Much Evidence Do You Need to Make a Decision? Depends on Your Mindset. (northwestern.edu).