The frame is the message (1)

A woman approaches you. She is suffering from tuberculosis. Her husband has syphilis. They have had four children.  The first is blind, the second died, the third is deaf and dumb, and the fourth has tuberculosis. Now the woman is pregnant with her fifth child. She and her husband are willing to have an abortion. There is no way you can examine the foetus and find out if it is all right.

L Agnew of the department of Medical History, University of California, set this scene at the start of a class and asked his students:  “What advice would you give the couple?” 

Before you read on and find out what the students said, ask yourself what advice you would give the couple. Unless driven by a strong belief that  all abortions are sinful, you are likely to advise the couple to go in for an abortion. Why go through the fifth pregnancy when there is a very high chance approaching certainty that the outcome will be tragic? Is it worth taking such a big risk?

Most of the students readily advised the woman to go in for an abortion as the most reasonable course of action.  “Congratulations,” said Agnew, “You have just murdered Beethoven.”

“Oh no,” you say. We thought this was just another uneducated couple who didn’t know what was good for them and messed up their lives. This new piece of information changes the picture completely. What Agnew told us initially led us as well as the students to recommend abortion. We didn’t know if the woman and her husband came from illustrious families that had produced great composers or scientists. If they did and if we were given that information along with the list of all the problems they were suffering from, many more of us might have suggested that they should perhaps take a chance rather than abort the foetus.

We do know that Ludwig van Beethoven turned deaf in his 20s and died when he was fifty-seven. Of course he was so brilliant that he composed masterpieces and conducted orchestras even after he became totally deaf. We can’t be blamed for recommending abortion based on the information Agnew gave us.

This is what a frame does. It limits our vision and shapes our thinking without our noticing it. This is what all smart persuaders do. They give us a frame to see things through. Based on what we see through that frame we happily arrive at conclusions that the persuaders want us to. Often the frame appears so attractive that we don’t ask whether we need to look at things beyond what is in the frame. So with apologies to Marshall McLuhan, we can say the frame is the message.

Have you had any interesting experience of being influenced by smart framing by others?

Photo credit: istockphoto.com