Thinking and Deciding

302 CHOICE UNDER CERTAINTY
At other times we think of decisions positively as opportunities for achieving a good,
as when we must choose between two attractive job offers. This perception is a
matter of framing. We could think of the medical treatments as good things, if we
compared them to no treatment at all. Normatively, all that matters is the relative
position of the options, the differences between them. It is not the decision that
makes the options good or bad relative to some other reference point. It is fate, and
our own frame of mind in choosing the reference point.
The reference point can be manipulated. Houston, Sherman, and Baker (1991)
asked subjects to choose between two options, each described in terms of a number
of features, some positive and some negative. In one type of decision, the negative
features were all common to both options, and the positive features were unique. For
example, in a choice between two automobiles, both had such negative features as
“hard to find service outlets” and “poor warranty.” But the positive features were
different for the two options. If one had the feature “doesn’t need repairs often,” the
other would have some other positive feature, such as “good financing available.”
This method of presentation encourages subjects to ignore the common negative features
and make the decision in terms of the positive features. Other choices were
devised in which the positive features were shared and the negative features were
unique. Each option had as many positive as negative features in all choices. Subjects
took longer to make decisions when the negative features were unique than
when the positive features were unique. Decisions with unique negatives seemed
more difficult. If the unique features were positive, subjects were more satisfied with
the decision when they focused on the chosen option (and less satisfied when they
thought about the rejected option) than when unique features were negative.
Another way to manipulate attention to positive and negative features is to ask
subjects either to “choose” an option or to “reject” an option. We tend to choose
options because of their positive features but reject them because of their negative
features. If option A has more positives and more negatives than option B, we will
choose A when we are asked to choose and reject A when asked to reject (Shafir,
1993). For example, subjects read descriptions of two vacations. One was described
as “average weather, average beaches, medium-quality hotel, medium-temperature
water, average nightlife.” The other was described as “lots of sunshine, gorgeous
beaches and coral reefs, ultramodern hotel, very cold water, very strong winds, no
nightlife.” When asked to choose, most subjects chose the second. When asked
which vacation they twould cancel if they had reservations for both at the same time,
most chose to cancel the second, thus choosing the first.
Individuals differ in whether they tend to think in terms of achieving gains or
preventing losses. Some people think that getting two job offers is a good thing,
even though they might be conflicted about which one to accept, but grouches will
think of the job choice as a question of which job they will have to give up, as if
their reference point were all the attractive features of both jobs. Higgins (2000) has
called the gain orientation a “promotion focus” and the loss orientation a “prevention
focus.” People with a promotion focus think in terms of ideals and opportunities and
seem to do better when the task they are given is framed in terms of gains; those with