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Concept

Narrow framing

Narrow framing is the tendency to see a decision as whether-or-not, one option against nothing, when there are almost always more doors. It is the first of the Heaths' four villains and the one most cheaply fixed.

Paul Nutt's study of 168 organisational decisions found that 71 percent considered only one option, and that those whether-or-not decisions failed more than half the time, against about a third for decisions with two or more real alternatives. Narrow framing is not a lack of intelligence; it is what the mind does when a door appears in front of it. Teenagers and executives frame identically. The fix is to add a real option before evaluating anything, which is what the vanishing options test and multitracking are for.

A real-life example

'Should I take this job or not?' is a narrow frame. 'Should I take this job, ask for the project I want where I am, or ask the competitor for a different role?' is the same decision widened, and it fails far less often.

How to use it

  1. 1If your decision sentence contains 'whether' or 'or not', you have found narrow framing.
  2. 2Add at least one real option before you evaluate any of them.