To save or lose? A cross‐national examination of the disease risk framing effect and the influence of collectivism

Abstract Using a large dataset from the COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey Consortium spanning 49 countries ( N = 102,830), we examined the robustness of Tversky and Kahneman's (1981) framing effect within each country using a variation of the classic Asian Disease Scenario. Results indicated that the framing effect —where respondents are more likely to take the safe option (i.e., a known number of lives saved or lost) than the risky option (i.e., a probability of saving lives) when framed as a gain (i.e., number of lives saved) instead of a loss (i.e., number of lives lost)—was replicated in 100% of the countries examined ( h = 0.612, 95% CI [0.568, 0.656]). Results showed that societal collectivism was negatively associated with individual propensity to select the safer option in both the gain and loss framed conditions. Collectivism was also partly related to smaller framing effect sizes at the country level. Implications and future directions are discussed.