  In complex systems, decision makers often have to consider qualitatively
different risks when choosing between options. Do their strategies of
integrating these risks depend on the framing of problem contents? In the
present study, participants were either instructed that they were choosing
between two ways of solving a complex problem, or between two generic options.
The former was framed as a modular plant scenario that required choices between
modifying parameter settings in a current module (Adapt) and replacing the
module by another one (Exchange). The risk was higher for Adapt to harm the
product and for Exchange to harm the plant. These risks were presented as
probabilities, and participants were either told that the consequences of both
risks were equally severe (content-same group), or that harming the plant was
much worse (content-different group). A third group made decisions based on the
same probabilities, but received a generic task framing (no-content group). We
expected framing to affect risk integration, leading the content-same group to
make different choices than the no-content group. Contrary to this hypothesis,
these two groups were strikingly similar in their decision outcomes and
strategies, but clearly differed from the content-different group. These
findings question whether ecological validity can be enhanced merely by framing
a task in terms of real-world problem contents.
