Tversky & Kahneman 1981 (Science) — "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice"

Claim: Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated that logically identical prospects produce systematically different choices when presented as gains versus losses. The classic Asian-disease experiment showed majority preferences flip between two formally equivalent options depending purely on gain-vs-loss framing.

Source: Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice." Science 211(4481): 453–458.

Confidence: Verified.

For Candid: The frame a pitch arrives in does as much work as the underlying offer. A marketing engagement framed as "investing $X for projected return Y" sits in the gain frame and is evaluated against the certainty effect ([[tversky-kahneman-1992-probability-weighting-certainty-effect]]) — the probable upside is heavily discounted. The same engagement framed as "exposure of at most $X over six months, with kill points at month 2 and 4" reframes against the loss-domain reference point and engages a different — for this population more permissive — decision rule. This is the mechanism behind the bounded-loss frame ([[bounded-vs-implicit-loss-frame-distinction]]).