The Framing Effect

Nine out of ten owners say their cats prefer it.

That’s the tagline. That’s what sells cat food. Not “one in ten cats don’t like it,” even though statistically that’s exactly the same information. Same data, different frame, completely different response.

Previously in the foundation course we talked about the Affect Heuristic and how emotion affects the decisions we make in life. But there’s a bigger effect at work here, one that’s even more powerful. The emotional element is just one piece of the puzzle affecting the decisions we make each day.

When we make decisions, we’re influenced by how information is mentally presented to us. This phenomenon is called the framing effect, and it’s working on you right now, every single day, whether you realise it or not.

Everything You See Has Already Been Framed

Turn the TV on tonight. Watch a few adverts. Try to catch yourself warming to a product when it’s sold to you by a half decent ad or salesman. Marketers know that if they frame information in a more positive way, they’ll influence your decision to buy their product. They’re not lying to you. They’re just choosing which truth to emphasise.

“Nine out of ten owners say their cats prefer it” is far more compelling than “one in ten cats don’t like it.” The information about the cat food is statistically identical, but it’s being reframed in a more positive way to compel you to purchase. Tversky and Kahneman’s landmark 1981 research showed that people make completely different choices depending on whether the same outcome is framed as a gain or a loss. We’re not as rational as we’d like to think.

But framing isn’t just about buying cat food and being influenced by salesmen. Think about your politicians, who probably aren’t too different from salesmen anyway. They’re always putting a positive spin on certain issues whilst putting a negative spin on the arguments of their opponents. The media takes a slant on the stories it prints, backs it up with creative news coverage designed to give you a more compelling story or deliberately influence public opinion on a mass scale.

Just getting a non-biased view of the world can be difficult without being influenced one way or another. Without a doubt, someone will have framed or reframed almost all the information you see in front of you at any one time.

Framing Isn’t Just External

But framing isn’t just about the outside world. Framing also affects how we view the world internally.

How we think about a particular event affects how we remember something, what we then believe, the decisions we make, and how we behave in the future. The frame through which you view your life literally shapes your life. Aaron Beck recognised this back in the 1970s when he developed cognitive therapy, showing that our interpretations of events matter far more than the events themselves.

The framing effect is used by therapists when working with clients. Psychologists call it cognitive reframing. They use it to identify and challenge irrational and unresourceful thoughts by reframing information, an experience, or a memory about something that happened, helping people see things in a different way by applying a different context.

Using some NLP methodology, the “frame” is where and how you focus your thoughts, and “reframing” is the process of changing how you frame an experience. Your head might be spinning with all this theory, but essentially, whatever definition you use, reframing is just about changing your perception. In the context of this course, it’s about changing unhelpful thoughts into more positive and resourceful ones.

By reframing your thoughts, you can make yourself feel more positive, which then makes you more likely to be proactive in changing your situation for the better in the future.

The Three Thought Patterns That Need Reframing

I think it’s worth mentioning the three most common thoughts and beliefs I come across daily that need reframing work so people can allow change into their lives.

The first is negative thinking. Negative thinking gives you the unfortunate ability to see the bad and the negative aspect in everything around you. You take a dim view of things. You only see a bleak future ahead. We’ll come back to this later, but right now it’s worth noting that negative thinking is a thought pattern that needs to be broken. If left unchecked, negative thinking inevitably leads to feelings of sadness, hopelessness, anger and anxiety. Research by Martin Seligman shows that your explanatory style, the habitual way you explain bad events to yourself, directly shapes whether you spiral into helplessness or bounce back.

Once you’re thinking negatively, you’re probably doing it automatically. To help catch yourself, look out for these phrases in your own talk and self-talk.

“Why does this always happen to me?”

“Nothing ever goes my way.”

“This is useless.”

“And the worst thing is…”

The second type of problem I commonly see is the limiting belief. The trouble with a limiting belief is it can really hold you back and stop you in your tracks. It prevents you from trying, learning, and most importantly, doing what you need to do to get out of the situation you’re in. Limiting beliefs can be difficult to spot, so catch these phrases in your self-talk.

“I’m not good enough, I can’t do it.”

“I’m useless.”

“I’m not clever enough.”

“There’s no way I can do this.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever…”

“I’m never that lucky.”

We’ll come onto limiting beliefs later in this course. For now, just notice these phrases in your own self-talk.

The third example I see regularly is when someone goes through life where nothing around them is good enough, nothing short of perfection is acceptable. They live a life of regret. There’s a lack of gratitude for what they’ve already got. They fail to see what’s already going right in their life.

“Nobody cares.”

“It could have been so much better.”

“If only I’d done…”

“I only got a pass.”

Some people reframe situations, themselves and the world around them in such a negative way that their construct of the world they live in isn’t a very nice place to be at all. The framing effect can change your perception of the world. It changes what you’re continually saying to yourself. You get stuck in your perception of reality.

How the Frame Changes Everything

The framing effect changes how you feel, how you see the world around you. It changes your perception of reality and what you feel you can achieve. It’s a combination of many other cognitive biases that can work for you or against you.

As for me, I’d very much rather see the world through rose tinted specs, feel positive, and see the good things in the world. Seldom is your reality as bad as it could be. Maybe you’re just convincing yourself it is. Perhaps there are times when you’ve used language like in the examples above in your own self-talk.

David’s Story

I had a patient, call him David, who came in every week for months. Each week he’d tell me about everything that had gone wrong. His boss was unfair. His colleagues were useless. His wife didn’t understand him. His kids were ungrateful. The traffic was terrible. The NHS was crap. The weather was rubbish. The government was incompetent.

One week I asked him, “What went right this week?”

He looked at me like I’d asked him to solve quantum physics. “What do you mean?”

“What went right? What was good? What worked?”

He sat there in silence for a full thirty seconds. Then he said, “Nothing really.”

“Nothing? In an entire week, nothing went right?”

He thought about it. “Well, I suppose my daughter did well in her test.”

“That’s great. What else?”

“The new project at work is going okay, I guess.”

“Anything else?”

“My wife cooked spag bol on Tuesday.”

By the end of the conversation, he’d listed about fifteen good things that happened that week. Same week. Same events. Different frame. He’d been so focused on what was wrong that he’d completely filtered out everything that was right.

That’s the framing effect in action. He wasn’t lying about the problems. They were real. But by framing his entire week through the lens of what went wrong, he’d created a reality where everything was terrible, even though objectively, most things were fine. David Burns would call this a classic example of mental filtering, one of the most common cognitive distortions, where you pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively until your entire vision of reality becomes darkened.

You Can Change the Frame

Perhaps you’re still convincing yourself that you can’t do something. Perhaps you need to start reframing your perception until it’s a bit more like your reality.

The world you experience is the world you expect to experience. If you’re constantly framing everything negatively, you’ll find more negative things. If you’re looking for what’s wrong, you’ll always find it. If you’re convinced nothing will work, nothing will. Thomas Gilovich’s research demonstrates just how readily we confirm our existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence. Your frame doesn’t just filter reality. It actively constructs it.

But here’s the thing. You can change the frame. You can choose how you interpret events. You can decide what meaning you give to your experiences. You can reframe your thoughts, your memories, your expectations.

That’s not toxic positivity. That’s not pretending problems don’t exist. That’s recognising that the same situation can be viewed through different frames, and the frame you choose determines your emotional response, your decisions, and ultimately, your outcomes. Ellen Langer’s work on mindfulness shows that simply becoming aware of the frames you’re using can transform how you experience the world around you.

So start noticing your frames. When something happens, notice how you’re interpreting it. Notice the language you’re using. Notice whether you’re automatically framing things negatively or whether you’re giving yourself a fair, balanced view.

Because seldom is your reality as bad as your frame makes it seem.

Further reading

• Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453-458.
• Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. International Universities Press.
• Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage Books.
• Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. William Morrow.
• Langer, E. J. (1989). Mindfulness. Addison-Wesley.