Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. 1981. (View Paper → )
How you frame a choice reliably flips what people prefer, even when the math is the same: phrasing outcomes as lives “saved” vs. “lost” reverses risk appetite; “guaranteed” beats probabilistic equivalents via certainty/pseudocertainty; and psychological accounting means labels and grouping e.g., “cash discount” vs “card surcharge,” or losing a ticket vs. losing cash change willingness to pay.
Microcopy, defaults, and packaging are super important in digital products. How you name plans, present savings, describe guarantees, and bundle steps can drive behaviour as much as price…so test frames rigorously and set ethical guardrails against pseudo-certainty.