Abstract:

The framing effect on social preferences refers to the phenomenon in which individuals, who are influenced by the frames of scheme selection, show the change of cooperative, reciprocal and altruistic behaviors. It is the application of framing effect in the field of social preferences. There are five theoretical models to interpret this phenomenon in the previous literature of social preferences, which are prospect theory, misperception theory, psychological dynamic model, construal level theory and mood maintenance theory. Meanwhile, evidence revealed that framing effect on social preferences may be influenced by some factors, such as psychical distance, value orientation, personality and culture. Therefore, further researches for framing effect on social preferences are expected to explore its mental and neural mechanism, to make its research paradigm more abundant and to improve the external validity. Finally, it is necessary to promote studies by using multidisciplinary methods.

Key words: social preferences, framing effect, prospect theory, construal level theory, psychical distance