RELATIVE AMOUNT OF MONETARY SAVINGS AS A FACTOR OF PROPOSITION AGING AND ELIMINATION OF THE FRAMING EFFECT

The present study deals with the framing effect in topical mental account (Tversky, Kahneman, 1981) and with factors of its elimination. The elimination of the framing effect was described earlier (Polunin, 2009) and explained by the influence of two temporal processes (aging of proposition and past openness). The question raised in this study is whether different velocity of proposition aging can be sufficient to eliminate the framing effect. It was assumed that aging of proposition depends upon two factors: the absolute and the relative level of savings proposition. Two levels of absolute and relative monetary savings were introduced as variables in the experiment. Their influence on aging of proposition and finally on the framing effect was examined. The results confirmed the classical framing effect (Kahneman, Tversky, 1984) for the tasks with the savings proposition beginning in the present time mode. The complete elimination of the framing effect was replicated for tasks with the savings proposition beginning in the past time mode (Polunin, 2009). As a new finding, it was shown that an absolute and a relative amount of monetary savings oppositely influence the aging of proposition. Furthermore, the amount of relative price reduction (monetary savings) causes an essential difference in the velocity of aging, which alone could be sufficient for the explanation of the complete elimination of the framing effect.