story-telling: the art of framing

We've already considered how 'framing' can influence how we see certain issues:
Jay Doubleyou: story telling: creating narratives around climate change
Jay Doubleyou: story-telling: creating narratives around money and debt

And we've looked at how we can be 'manipulated':
Jay Doubleyou: how to spot media bias
Jay Doubleyou: positive power and influence

Looking again at the research:

How you frame it De Martino and his colleagues scanned the brains of 20 volunteers. At the same time, the researchers told the participants they received a sum of money and then repeatedly posed them one of two choices: Keep a chunk of money or gamble, or lose a chunk of money or gamble.

As expected, those told they could keep money or gamble were generally leerier of risk. On the other hand, volunteers informed they could lose money or gamble often were more risk-seeking.

The volunteers who were more susceptible to the framing effect showed greater activity in an emotion- and learning-related brain region called the amygdala.

People most immune to this framing effect had increased activity in other brain regions, the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex, "some of the most modern areas of the brain, the most different between us and the other primates," De Martino told LiveScience. When these are damaged, the resulting behavior can be driven completely by emotion and impulse.

Let's look again at how framing changes your decisions:


How Framing Changes your Decisions - YouTube

In other words, we are not entirely 'rational' when we come to making decisions:
Behavioral economics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can we 'nudge' people to make 'the right decisions'?
Nudge theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness: Amazon.co.uk: Richard H Thaler, Cass R Sunstein: Books
Nudge (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Nudge, the Video: Behavioural Economics in Action - YouTube

But this in turn has been heavily criticised as 'paternalistic':

The book draws on research in psychology and behavioral economics to defend libertarian paternalism and active engineering of choice architecture.^[1][2][3][4]

Nudge (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Soft paternalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A new book just out says that 'people are not stupid'...
Click on the interview at the bottom of the piece:
Nudge economics: has push come to shove for a fashionable theory? | Science | The Observer
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