Table 1.
Experimental stimuli in the four different frames.
Fig 1.
The correct answers to the mitigation, high exponential growth and low exponential growth questions for frames T-r and T-d are given by MT, HT and LT, respectively. For frames C-r and C-d the answers are given by MC, HC and LC, respectively. The high exponential growth function is fH (26% per day/doubling time of 3 days), the low exponential growth function is fL (9% per day/doubling time of 8 days). Not drawn to scale.
Fig 2.
A-B: cumulative distribution function (CDF) of answers to the mitigation question, for A, frame C-r (orange line, n = 114)) and frame C-d (blue line, n = 102), B, frame T-r (green line, n = 109) and frame T-d (purple line, n = 111). C-D: CDF of answers to the high exponential growth question, C, frame C-r (n = 115) and C-d (n = 111), C, frame T-r (n = 109) and T-d (n = 111). E-F: CDF of answers to the low exponential growth question, E, frame C-r (n = 116) and C-d (n = 111), F, frame T-r (n = 113) and T-d (n = 116). Solid vertical line indicates correct answer. Hatched area indicates beliefs that reveal mitigation /exponential growth bias. Axes are capped.
Table 2.
Difference in share of biased subjects across frames.
Fig 3.
Mitigation bias and exponential growth bias.
A: answers to the mitigation question plotted against the difference in answers to the exponential growth questions for frame C-r (n = 54). B: same plot for frame C-d (n = 50). Solid lines indicate the correct answer to the mitigation question, respectively, the difference between the correct answers to the exponential growth questions (about 1 million cases avoided). For observations on the dashed line, mitigation bias can be fully explained by exponential growth bias. Multiple identical answers are displayed by larger circles. Only subjects to whom the mitigation question was displayed prior to the exponential growth questions are included. Data points with non-positive values are excluded. One outlier in C-d is not shown.