Daniel Kahneman may be the most revered and well-known behavioral scientist on the planet, and for good reason. In 2002, he won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for discovering that the way a choice is framed shapes how it is perceived and whether it will be acted on. For instance, in one of Kahneman’s legendary research studies , people were given the following scenario:

Imagine that there is an outbreak of a deadly disease that will kill 600 people and you must choose between the following two options for combatting it.

Option 1: Guarantees that 200 people will live.

Option 2: Provides a one-third probability that all 600 people will live, but it also comes with a 1/3 probability that no one will survive.

Most participants choose Option 1. Yet, if you think through the choices, you can see that the probabilities of each are identical. The difference is how the options are framed. Kahneman found when two equal options are presented, the one that is framed to emphasize loss is more likely to be rejected.

Kahneman’s findings inspired scientists to conduct further research into framing. Their studies discovered that framing affects decisions, even those presumed unlikely to be swayed. For example, frames have been shown to increase receptiveness to a political message, affect how much energy homeowners consume, and even determine whether people donate their organs.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman summarized the impact of frames: “Unless there is an obvious reason to do otherwise, most of us passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.”

Two frames to consider

So how can this research be put into practice? To put it simply: If you frame scenarios certain ways, you can become more persuasive—both when speaking to others and when trying to motivate yourself. Consider the two frames Kahneman used in his experiment about the deadly disease: the loss-aversion frame (Option 2) and what I’ve been calling the positive-outcome frame (Option 1).

Positive-outcome frames are very persuasive because they focus others on the benefits they’ll experience by embracing your recommendation. Research suggests that when your argument is strong, this is the sort of frame you’ll want to use. Why? These frames are more likely to be thought through, in comparison to loss-framed messages, which evoke a stronger emotional response. The persuasive clout of positive-outcome frames was evident when researchers found that doctors were more likely to recommend a treatment when it was presented as having a 90% survival rate than when told it had a 10% mortality rate.