Another frame, another game?: Explaining framing effects in economic games

Small changes in the framing of games (i.e., the way in which the game situation is described to participants) can have large effects on players' choices. For example, referring to a prisoner's dilemma game as the "Community Game" as opposed to the "Wall Street Game" can double the cooperation rate (Liberman, Samuels, & Ross, 2004). Framing effects are an empirically well-studied phenomenon. However, a coherent theoretical explanation of the observed effects is still lacking. We distinguish between two types of framings - valence framing and context framing - and provide an overview of three general classes of theories that may account for the observed changes in behaviour