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Understanding Bracketing Effects To Make Better Decisions
You don’t realise the full consequences of your actions
Framing is a term used in behavioural economics to describe the way in which options are presented to people. In theory, whenever we make a decision, we should be trying to maximise our utility, which basically means, we make the choice that benefits us the most overall. It shouldn’t really matter how the choices are presented. However, in reality, this can largely affect the option we choose, sometimes leading us to make poor decisions that don’t benefit us overall.
It’s important to be aware of the way different types of frames are used in your day to day life, or you’ll end up unconsciously making poor decisions.
This will be the first in a series of articles on the different types of framing that are common in our everyday lives.
Bracketing Effects
Bracketing relates to the way in which we evaluate our decisions. When we evaluate each decision separately, as an isolated instance, we call this narrow bracketing. When we evaluate our decisions together as a whole, we call this broad bracketing. Narrow bracketing only allows us to see the immediate individual effects of a given choice. For example, If I were using narrow brackets, I might decide to play…
