While the results of this study expand upon previous research on the framing effect, more investigation will be needed to converge upon a theory for the effect in low and high payoff scenarios. The ability to generalize our results across populations is also key. Scenarios were devised with the subject pool in mind; high-payoff scenarios offered consequences that were thought to be especially relevant and important to Psychology 331 students and instructors. What results would our questionnaire elicit in a completely different population, and would a more generalized measure yield as strong results? In addition, current research suggests that the framing effect is more pronounced in older adults (Kim, et al. 2005), a variable that we were not able to concretely examine. Future investigation may include similar procedures across two (or more) distinct age groups.

Though we were interested in examining the framing effect as a whole, we gained particular insight into how the frame of a scenario affects human decision-making across relatively large and small (albeit hypothetical) consequences. This is an important examination that can lead to a number of real-world inferences. For example, perhaps larger and more encompassing problems involving political, social, consumer, and medical decisions incur safer choice that are produced by the frame of the situation at hand. In our experiment, not only was the tendency to choose sure options in gain-framed scenarios and risky options in loss-framed scenarios supported across subjects, but scenarios involving higher payoffs also elicited surer responses. The fact that neither previous studies nor our own data supports our last hypothesis (that the framing effect would be more pronounced in high-payoff situations) is of note. Further investigation and refinement of procedure will undoubtedly help uncover how our decisions are influenced not only by the frame of the background information but also the magnitude of the consequences.