Seeking Risk or Answering Smart? Experimental Evidence on Framing Effects in Elementary Schools

Konferenzbeitrag

Losses are painful but how painful are negative outcomes? This paper presents results of a field experiment among 1377 elementary pupils on the effectiveness of loss framing and avoiding negative outcomes on pupils test performance. I compare answers of pupils in a multiple-choice test in math who are endowed with 0 points and earning points is framed as a gain (Control Group) to pupils who are endowed with the maximum number of points but earning points is framed as a loss (Loss Treatment). In a second treatment arm (Negative Treatment) earning points is again framed as a gain but pupils are endowed with a negative amount of points. However, pupils in this treatment could achieve a positive outcome by earning at least half of the points. I find that, on average, the number of correctly solved questions increases significantly in both treatments (Loss and Negative). The multiple-choice testing format allows to identify the underlying channels of improvements. While pupils in the Loss Treatment significantly seem to seek more risk---answer more multiple-choice questions---pupils in the Negative Treatment significantly answer more accurately---increase the share of correctly answered questions. Nevertheless, the Negative Treatment is preferable to the Loss Treatment as both treatments indeed significantly increase performance of high-ability pupils but low-ability pupils significantly perform worse under a loss frame.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2016: Demographischer Wandel - Session: Behavioral Decision Making: Experiments ; No. B05-V1

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Field Experiments ; Education and Research Institutions: General ; Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty: General

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Wagner, Valentin
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
• (where): Kiel und Hamburg
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/145678
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET