Abstract

Framing and default effects have been studied for more than a decade in different disciplines. A common criticism of these studies is that they use hypothetical scenarios. In this study, we developed a real decision environment: a Facebook application in which users had to decide whether or not they wanted to be automatically publicly tagged in their friends’ pictures and/or tag their friends in their own pictures. To ensure ecological validity, participants had to log in to their Facebook account. Our results confirmed previous studies indicating a higher tagging rate in positively framed and accept-by-default conditions. Furthermore, we introduced a manipulation that we assumed would overshadow and thereby reduce the effects of default and framing: a justification highlighting a positive or negative descriptive social norm or giving a rationale for or against tagging. We found that such justifications may at times increase tagging rates.

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