Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings.

The authors examined the effects of framing on life-saving interventions and found interesting divergences. Participants were asked about whether equipment should be bought for use in airport safety procedures. In one condition participants were told the equipment has a chance saving 150 lives. In other conditions participants were told it had a x% chance of saving 150 lives.The authors predicted that the participants would interpret saving 150 lives as diffusely good, whereas saving 98% of 150 people is something clearly very good. The results confirmed this hypothesis, as is evident in the graph. Interestingly even the chance to save 85% of 150 (that is 127.5 people) attracted more support than the chance to save 150 outright.This has interesting implications for, for example, how charities might best appeal to people to elicit donations.