Depending on how any issue is framed, it can have an impact on how: a problem will be defined, its etiology will be delineated, and remedies will be formulated. In an article published in the January 30, 1981 issue of the journal Science, a pair of Israeli psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, shed early light on the relevance of this topic by discussing how health messages can be framed in either the benefits of engaging in a recommended behavior (gain-framed messages) or the costs of not engaging in that behavior (loss-framed messages). Although conveying essentially identical information, one form of message-framing may be more effective at promoting health behavior change than the other.
For example, they conducted a study in which they asked respondents to imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 victims. Two alternative programs to combat the disease were proposed. These researchers found that choices involving gains are often risk averse and choices involving losses are often risk taking. The only effective difference between the two programs is that outcomes were described in one problem by the number of lives saved and in the other by the number of lives lost. Kahneman’s doctorate is from Berkeley and while serving at Princeton, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his body of work. Tversky died in 1996. Nobel awards are not made posthumously.
Unlike their study, today the world actually continues to experience the ill effects of a coronavirus pandemic. As a means of preventing a future outbreak of a highly deadly communicable disease, it is important to learn how COVID-19 originated. One school of thought proposes that the cause was natural, resulting from the consumption of food by humans in the form of bat and pangolin meat sold in wet markets in China. An entirely different frame asks whether the disease emerged as a result of a leak in a Wuhan virology laboratory where gain-of-function research was conducted to convert a virus into a more deadly and transmissible form. Each frame differs considerably from the perspective of the kinds of effective safeguards to construct to prevent the appearance of a similar pandemic anytime in the future.
Another major concern of policymakers in the U.S. is an opioid epidemic that continues to produce fatal consequences for users of addictive substances. One approach is to frame the problem as a health issue. Corrective measures might focus on: prevention, development of improved treatment protocols, increased financial support for recovery facilities, and discovery of less addictive substances and more effective non-medication kinds of interventions to reduce levels of pain. An entirely different approach would be to frame the opioid problem as essentially being of a law enforcement nature. Proposed remedies could include tighter restrictions at the nation’s southern border to prohibit the criminal activity of drug cartels and the infliction of harsher penalties when drug dealers are apprehended. Perhaps implementing a combination of the two approaches might work best, but when resources are limited, it may be necessary to select one choice to the possible detriment of the other alternative.