How our Frames Direct Us: A Poker Experiment

Abstract

We adapt Erving Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis to discover how frames shape individuals’ decisions in a poker-based experiment. The frames that surfaced in our subjects’ verbalizations suggest the ways in which they form very different impressions of “what is going on” in an identical situation. Our findings revealed that people’s frames drive the information they attend to in a situation, the interpretation they put on that information, and the way they synthesize the information to make a decision. The thematic frames that emerged differed dramatically across groups of individuals; they also were cohesive, multifaceted, and relatively few in number. As a result they were predictive: one could foretell a person’s behavior across multiple situations given the consistency in the frame adopted. In most cases, frames also revealed a significant mismatch with the requirements of the situation. Management scholars and practitioners would be wise to be more alert to frames which can do as much to derail effective decision-making as to facilitate it.

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