Framing Effect Intellectual Structure Mapping: A Bibliometric Review

Framing effect is a cognitive bias that leads people to display a preference for one option between alternatives that are factually equivalent but differ in the way they are presented. The effect was demonstrated by Tversky and Kahneman following the development of Prospect Theory, gained momentum in the early 1980s, and continues to be a widely researched topic. Employing a bibliometric co-citation analysis, the current paper maps the intellectual structure of research in framing effects of the last 20 years of publications. The results reveal four clusters that represent the main areas of concentration of scholarly research on framing, providing an interesting case of the scientific development process. The first cluster reveals that framing research, although initially based on Prospect Theory, which confronted traditional expected utility theory in the field of economics, was mainly advanced in the field of psychology. Initially applied to choices between risky-choices, scholars expanded framing research to contexts where no risk is at stake, and other theories and cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms were proposed. The second and third clusters revealed that framing research has been mainly applied in the fields of communication / political sciences and health, respectively. The final cluster, composed of seminal papers on framing, reveals that the framing effect remains relevant and still requires additional studies to better assess its effects on different profiles of individuals, scenarios, contexts, and methodological approaches.