Spot the frame being used on you

Re-describe a choice in the opposite frame to see what you actually think.

Why it works

Because frames operate beneath awareness, the defense is to make them explicit: deliberately restating an option in its opposite frame ("90% survive" → "10% die") reveals the substance under the spin and exposes when your reaction was driven by presentation rather than facts.

How to do it

1. When a choice feels obviously good or bad, restate it in the opposite frame.
2. Strip to the underlying numbers/facts and re-decide from those.
3. Ask what frame the messenger chose and why.

Evidence

Consistent with debiasing research: "consider the opposite" and re-representation reduce framing and related biases, though they don’t eliminate them. Lord, Lepper, and Preston showed that explicitly prompting people to consider the opposite corrected biased judgment where simply telling them to be unbiased did not. (rct)

Reframing-as-defense is only partial; even people who know about the effect remain somewhat susceptible.

Sources

• Lord, C. G., Lepper, M. R., & Preston, E. (1984). Considering the opposite: A corrective strategy for social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(6), 1231–1243.

Common mistake

Assuming awareness alone protects you, then deciding on the original frame anyway because it "felt" right.