Cognitive Thinking Styles and Susceptibility to Framing Effects

Abstract

Cultural differences in thought processes (i.e., holistic versus analytic thinking) have been suggested as an explanation for different susceptibility to framing effects. To test this, we conducted an experiment which investigates several framing problems and various measures of cognitive modes of thinking in two countries: Germany and Vietnam. We end clear evidence that holistic thinking style reduces the framing effect in specific tasks while in others it does not. Indeed, this is the primary factor (but maybe not the only one) explaining cultural differences in framing between Germans and Vietnamese. We suggest a theoretical model predicting the task-dependence of this effect. More- over, we observe that demographics can also affect the susceptibility to framing effects. Additional data from Taiwan confirms our results.

Keywords: Framing Effect, Analytic and Holistic Thinking, Analytic-Holism Scale, Categorization

JEL Classification: G11, G41