A New Look At Framing Effects: Exploring How Cognitive Styles Impact On Different Types Of Framing Effects

As an advanced cognitive activity, decision-making exists in human daily life. In the pastfew decades, the rationality of the decision-making process has sparked enormous interestwithin the fields of psychology and also economy. In the contrast to the axiom of descriptionof invariance, vast numbers of reports in the literature and results from research haveindicated that people often deviate from responses considered as being normative in manyjudgemental and decision-making tasks, which is also known as framing effect indecision-making that different representations of the same problem do not yield the samepreference or choice. Traditional research in framing effects has commonly and mainly beenfocused on risky choice framing effect, whereas the research on other types of framing effectand the influential factors seems to be lacking. Therefore, the current study has utilizedquestionnaire, ERP technology, LORETA souce localization technology and other techniquesto further investigate the differences of cognitive activities and neuromechanism betweenindividuals with field-dependent cognitive style and field-independent cognitivelyrespectively, starting with the distinctions in behavioural responses that individual withdifferent cognitive styles may have. Results from the analysis of the brain activities and theaverage amplitude and latent period of N200and P300in the present study illustrate that theaverage amplitudes of N200and P300in the left hemisphere are significantly lower than theright hemisphere, regardless of the cognitive styles. Furthermore, in the situation where thedecision tasks have utilized verbal scenarios, the average amplitudes of N200and P300inparticipants with field-dependent cognitive style are remarkably lower than thefield-independent individuals; thereagainst, in the situation where decision problem isexhibited with graphical representations, no outstanding difference on the average amplitudesof N200and P300has been found between individuals with the two different cognitive styles.The manipulation of LORETA source localization technology on the source of N200andP300in the brain activities has revealed that multi region in the brain, such as the frontal lobeand parietal lobe, are involved in the cognitive processing in decision-making.To integrate the research results of the present study with previous research, severalconclusions can be drawn:The representations of the decision task can impact on people’s decision behaviour andbrain activity, simultaneously, the impact can somehow conceal the differences in cognitiveprocessing caused by cognitive style itself between people with field-dependent cognitivestyle and field-independent cognitive style.When the decision tasks are represented utilizing verbal scenarios, the average amplitudes of N200and P300and response time are significantly different betweenindividuals with the two cognitive styles, known as field-dependent and field-independent.Additionally, comparing with individuals with field-dependent cognitive style, individualswith field-independent cognitive style put extra cognitive processing into the initialassessment and feedback process afterwards.In the situation where the decision problems are demonstrated using graphicrepresentations, similar early processing and behaviour features have been found in thecognitive process in decision-making between people with field-dependent cognitive style andfield-independent cognitive style. Furthermore, more attentional resources and furthercognitive processing have been assigned to the information of the decision questions inindividuals with field-independent cognitive style, rather than individuals withfield-dependent cognitive style.The right hemisphere has been proved to play a vital role in the cognitive processing ofdecision-making, and the right-hemisphere dominance in early evaluation process and later-oncognitive assessment has been found in people with both field-dependent cognitive style andfield-independent cognitive style.The representations of decision problem can alter the time course of brain activities.Specifically, when the representations are verbally, decision-makers’ cognitive processing ofstimuli start from the left hemisphere and gradually transfer towards the right hemisphere,which finalized in the right hemisphere. Nevertheless, when the decision problem aredescribed using graphical representations, decision-makers’ cognitive processing of thestimuli start from the right hemisphere and shift to the left hemisphere, then completed theprocessing there.Results of source localization analysis on the brain activities of N200and P300indicatethe several areas in the frontal lobe and parietal lobe have been activated by the cognitiveprocessing of decision-making, including superior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus,post-central gyrus, and lingual gyrus, which comprise BA6, BA7, BA18and other regions.This result is consistent with the findings from previous cerebral imaging studies, whichimplied the vital role that frontal lobe and parietal lobe played in the decision-making process.