Framing Errors

Learning Objectives

By completing this book, you will be able to:

1. Explain what a frame is, and why every formulation of a problem is necessarily an act of framing that includes and excludes simultaneously.

2. Analyze how cognitive frames (Kahneman and Tversky), linguistic frames (Lakoff), social frames (Goffman), and strategic frames (Entman) operate in the formulation of intentions.

3. Identify the six most frequent framing errors in the formulation of problems and in requests made to intelligent systems.

4. Apply systematic reframing techniques (Schön and Rein, Dorst) to expand the solution space of any problem.

5. Recognize how conceptual metaphors structure thinking and formulation without the person doing the formulating being aware of it.

6. Design interactions with intelligent systems that detect implicit frames and offer alternative perspectives before executing.

1. Introduction: Every Formulation Is a Frame

Imagine you are looking at a scene through the viewfinder of a camera. What you see depends on where you point it, which lens you use, and where you decide the edge of the image falls. The scene is the same, but each photographic frame tells a different story. Moving the camera one meter to the right can transform an image of solitude into one of companionship, one of desolation into one of hope.

Formulating a problem works exactly the same way. Every time someone says “the problem is…”, they are choosing a frame: a cropping of reality that includes certain elements, excludes others, emphasizes some relationships, and ignores the rest. And just as with photography, the frame is not something added to the problem—it is constitutive of the problem. There is no such thing as a problem “without a frame,” in the same way that there is no photograph without edges.

“A hospital has a hospital-acquired infection rate of 8%. Hygiene frame: ‘The cleaning protocols are not being followed.’ Staffing frame: ‘There are too many patients per nurse.’ Infrastructure frame: ‘The ventilation system is obsolete.’ Incentives frame: ‘Nobody is accountable for infection outcomes.’ Culture frame: ‘Reporting errors is punished instead of rewarded.’ Each frame is partly true, none is entirely true, and each generates a radically different plan of action. Whichever frame is adopted will determine where the resources are spent—and which causes remain ignored.”

This is the power and the danger of frames: they are unavoidable (you cannot formulate a problem without framing it), they are invisible (the person doing the framing is rarely aware that they are framing), and they are decisive (the frame conditions every subsequent decision). For Intention Architecture, understanding frames is not an intellectual accessory—it is the core of the discipline.

1.1 From Cognitive Bias to Structural Frame

In Module I you studied cognitive biases as individual distortions. Framing errors operate at a different level: they are not deviations from correct reasoning, they are the very structure of the reasoning. A bias is something you have; a frame is something you think inside of. You can correct a bias; a frame you can only replace with another.

Erving Goffman, a Canadian sociologist, was the first to analyze frames systematically as social structures in his work Frame Analysis (1974). For Goffman, frames are the interpretive schemata that people use to organize their experience and make sense of events. They are neither good nor bad; they are the conditions of possibility for understanding. Without a frame, reality would be a chaotic flow of meaningless stimuli.

“When you see two people shouting in the street, your interpretation depends on the frame you activate. If you activate the frame of ‘a fight,’ you might call the police. If you activate the frame of ‘a theater rehearsal,’ you might sit down and watch. If you activate the frame of ‘a sports celebration,’ you might smile. The facts are identical—two humans vocalizing at high volume. But the frame transforms the facts into meaning. And the meaning transforms the response.”

2. Cognitive Frames: How the Brain Frames Without Asking Permission

The most influential work on cognitive frames comes from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose biases and heuristics you studied in Module I. But there is an aspect of their work that goes beyond individual biases: prospect theory (1979), which demonstrates how the frame systematically alters human decisions.

2.1 Prospect Theory and the Framing Effect

Prospect theory has several findings, but for our purposes the most important is the asymmetry between gains and losses. People do not evaluate outcomes in absolute terms but relative to a reference point. And—this is the key—losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains please. Losing 100 euros causes more pain than the joy of gaining 100 euros.

The consequence for frames is immediate: presenting the same information as a gain or as a loss changes the decision, even when the objective information is identical. This is not an “error” that people occasionally commit; it is a systematic property of the human cognitive system.

“A software company can present its product like this: ‘Our tool increases productivity by 25%’ (gain frame), or like this: ‘Without our tool, you are losing 25% of your productivity every day’ (loss frame). The information is the same. But loss aversion makes the second frame significantly more persuasive. Not because it is truer, but because it activates a more powerful emotional circuit.”

2.2 Reference Points and the Automatic Frame

The reference point—that standard against which outcomes are evaluated—is itself a frame. And frequently the reference point is established automatically, without conscious deliberation. The status quo tends to be the default reference point, which means that any change is evaluated as a gain or a loss relative to the current situation.

“An employee earning 50,000 who receives an offer of 55,000 from another company feels he is facing a ‘gain’ of 5,000. But if his colleague in the same position earns 60,000, the reference point changes: now he would earn 55,000 but ‘lose’ 5,000 relative to his social reference. The same figure—55,000—feels like a gain or a loss depending on the frame of comparison. And the decision he makes will depend on which frame dominates his perception.”

For the formulation of problems, reference points are crucial because they determine what is perceived as a “problem” in the first place. A problem does not exist in the abstract; it exists as a deviation from a reference point. If your reference point is the competition, your problem is “we are behind.” If your reference point is your own track record, your problem might be “we are better than ever.” Same company, same data, completely different problems.

2.3 The Framing Effect in Interactions with AI

Framing effects do not stop at the individual decision. They carry over directly into how users formulate requests to intelligent systems. The user's cognitive frame—their reference point, their gain-or-loss framework, their implicit comparison—enters the request without anyone noticing.

“A CEO who has just read an article about how a competitor adopted AI successfully asks a system: ‘I need an AI strategy for our company—we can't fall behind.’ The frame is one of loss (falling behind), reactive (responding to the competitor), and temporal (urgent). This frame excludes fundamental questions: does our company actually need AI right now? Did the competitor succeed, or did they merely issue a press release? Which specific problems would it solve? A system that executes the request without interrogating the frame produces an ‘AI strategy’ that may be a brilliant solution to a problem that does not exist.”

3. Conceptual Metaphors: The Frame That Lives Inside Language

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in their book Metaphors We Live By (1980), made a discovery that revolutionized linguistics and cognitive science: metaphors are not literary ornaments. They are the fundamental structure of human thought. We think in metaphors, and those metaphors determine how we perceive, reason, and act.

3.1 Metaphors Are Not Optional

Lakoff and Johnson showed that abstract concepts are understood through concrete ones. We cannot think about abstract ideas without resorting to physical metaphors. And those metaphors, far from being neutral, frame the concept in specific ways that include certain aspects and exclude others.

“Think about how we talk about time. We say that time ‘passes,’ that it ‘runs,’ that it is ‘spent’ or ‘invested.’ These are metaphors: time is not literally a liquid that flows, nor a currency that is spent. But the metaphor TIME IS MONEY has real consequences: if time is money, then ‘wasting’ time is bad, ‘saving’ time is good, and activities are evaluated by their temporal ‘return.’ A culture living under this metaphor considers reading for pleasure a ‘luxury’ and meditating ‘unproductive.’ The metaphor does not describe reality; it constructs it.”

3.2 Metaphors in the Formulation of Problems

Conceptual metaphors are the deepest and most invisible frame, because they live inside language itself. When a user formulates a problem, the metaphors they choose reveal and, simultaneously, impose a specific frame.

“Compare these formulations of the same phenomenon—a company that is not growing: (1) ‘We are stuck.’ Metaphor: PROGRESS IS MOVEMENT. Implied: we need to advance, there is an obstacle blocking the path. Suggested solutions: remove the obstacle, find another route, push harder. (2) ‘We are ripe for change.’ Metaphor: THE COMPANY IS AN ORGANISM. Implied: there is a natural evolution, growth has its seasons. Suggested solutions: transform, reinvent, accept cycles. (3) ‘We need to rebuild.’ Metaphor: THE COMPANY IS A BUILDING. Implied: the current structure is defective, it needs partial demolition and new construction. Suggested solutions: reorganize from the foundations. Three metaphors, three diagnoses, three action plans—all determined before a single data point has been analyzed.”

The danger of metaphors lies in how natural they feel. Nobody says “I am going to use a metaphor to frame this problem.” The metaphor simply appears, because it is the natural way of talking about the subject. And because it is natural, it goes unnoticed. Yet its impact on the formulation is enormous: the metaphor automatically selects what is relevant, what is cause, what is effect, and which solutions are conceivable.

3.3 Metaphors in Interactions with AI Systems

Conceptual metaphors are particularly critical in interactions with AI, because language models process the user's words literally and metaphorically at the same time. If a user says “my business is bleeding money,” a system can interpret the metaphor (financial problems) but also absorb its frame (a medical emergency: the bleeding must be stopped, apply a tourniquet, act fast). The result can be an answer biased toward emergency solutions when the problem may require diagnosis and long-term treatment.

“An entrepreneur says: ‘My startup is in the valley of death.’ This metaphor from the world of startups frames the situation as dangerous, temporary, and surmountable—you just have to ‘get out of the valley.’ But what if the more accurate metaphor is that the startup is in quicksand, where struggling harder only makes things worse? Or that it is in a maze, where the problem is not speed but direction? Each metaphor suggests a different strategy: survive vs. stop struggling vs. reorient.”

4. A Taxonomy of Framing Errors

Drawing on the work of Kahneman and Tversky, Lakoff, and Goffman, together with our own experience in the formulation of intentions, we can classify six fundamental framing errors. Each operates differently, but all share the same consequence: closing the solution space prematurely.

4.1 The Narrow Frame

Narrow framing occurs when the problem is formulated in a way that excludes most of the relevant dimensions, generally because the person formulating it is focused on a single variable or a single perspective. It is like looking at the world through a drinking straw: what you see is real, but you miss almost everything.

“A marketing team asks an AI: ‘Optimize the subject lines of our emails to increase the open rate.’ Narrow frame: it looks only at the open rate, and only at the subject line. But the open rate is a proxy: what matters is conversion. A sensationalist subject line could increase opens while destroying trust. The narrow frame wins one metric while losing the one that actually matters.”

4.2 The Symptom Frame

The symptom frame confuses symptoms with causes. It formulates the problem from what is observable without investigating the underlying structure. It is the most intuitive frame, because the symptom is the first thing you see, and System 1 tends to treat the first thing it sees as the most important (the WYSIATI effect from Module I).

“An e-commerce company observes that cart abandonment is 70%. Symptom frame: ‘How do we reduce cart abandonment?’ This leads to solutions like reminder emails, checkout discounts, and simplifying the payment process. But if the real cause is that the final prices (with shipping and taxes) are much higher than the prices initially displayed, then the ‘problem’ is not cart abandonment but the false expectation created by the price presentation. Treating the symptom without touching the cause is like taking painkillers for a broken bone.”

4.3 The Solutionist Frame

The solutionist frame formulates the problem so that the preferred solution appears to be the only logical answer. It is confirmation bias operating at the level of formulation: instead of looking for the best frame for the problem, one chooses the frame that best justifies the solution one already wants to implement.

“‘We need to implement AI in our customer service processes’ already presupposes that AI is the answer. The real problem—improving customer service—could be better solved with better human processes, better training, less bureaucracy, or even with fewer and better clients. But the solutionist frame has decided the verdict before the trial.”

4.4 The Temporal Frame

The temporal frame fixes the timescale on which the problem is evaluated, excluding consequences outside that window. A short-term frame can make a solution look brilliant when in the long term it is catastrophic, and vice versa.

“A government can frame economic policy quarterly (‘GDP grew this quarter’) or generationally (‘what planet are we leaving our grandchildren?’). Each timescale makes different problems visible and others invisible. The same happens to a company: ‘let's cut costs to improve this year's balance sheet’ can mean eliminating investments in innovation that will determine survival five years out. The temporal frame decides which future is relevant.”

4.5 The Single-Actor Frame

The single-actor frame assumes the problem has only one relevant protagonist—generally, the person formulating it. It ignores that most problems involve multiple actors with different interests, perspectives, and power.

“A founder says: ‘I need to find investors for my startup.’ Single-actor frame: the protagonist is the founder and his need. Multi-actor reframing: ‘What do investors need to see for funding my startup to be attractive to them?’ Now the investor is also an actor, with their own criteria, fears, and alternatives. The problem is not ‘finding’ investors (as though they were objects) but ‘creating the conditions under which the investment makes sense for both sides.’”

4.6 The Paradigmatic Frame

The paradigmatic frame is the deepest and the hardest to detect, because it operates at the level of assumptions shared by an entire community, industry, or culture. It is the frame Kuhn would describe as invisible because it is the paradigm. It is not perceived as a frame; it is perceived as “reality.”

“In the education industry, the dominant paradigm frames education as ‘content transmission.’ Within this paradigm, the problems are: how do we transmit better? How do we assess whether transmission occurred? How do we make transmission more efficient? But if you change the paradigm to ‘education is the construction of capabilities,’ the problems become radically different: what can the student do now that they could not do before? How do we create experiences that develop that capability? The first paradigm produces online video courses; the second produces simulations, mentorship, and real projects.”

5. Systematic Reframing: From Theory to Practice

If framing errors are the diagnosis, reframing is the intervention. But reframing cannot depend on momentary inspiration or individual creativity. It needs a method. Two theoretical frameworks offer systematic tools: Schön and Rein on frame reflection, and Kees Dorst on frame innovation.

5.1 Schön and Rein: Frame Controversies

Donald Schön (whose work on reflective practice you studied in Topic 2) collaborated with Martin Rein on Frame Reflection (1994), where they analyze how frames generate intractable controversies in public policy—and by extension, in any context where multiple actors frame the same problem in incompatible ways.

Schön and Rein propose that many conflicts are not disagreements about data but about frames. The parties do not differ on the facts; they differ on how to frame the facts. And since each frame generates its own internal logic, there is no way to resolve the conflict within any particular frame—you have to rise to the meta-level and reflect on the frames themselves.

“In the controversy over affordable housing, one frame says: ‘The problem is that not enough is being built’ (supply frame). Another says: ‘The problem is that speculation drives up prices’ (market frame). Another says: ‘The problem is that wages don't stretch far enough’ (income frame). Each frame has data supporting it. The conflict is not resolved with more data but with the capacity to see that each party is operating from a different and legitimate frame. Schön and Rein call this ‘reflecting on the frame’: examining the frames in play before trying to resolve anything within one of them.”

5.2 Dorst: Frame Innovation

Kees Dorst, a design researcher, carried these ideas into practical terrain with his book Frame Innovation (2015). Dorst proposes a nine-step method for generating new frames, but his central insight is elegant in its simplicity: when a problem is intractable, you do not need a better solution; you need a better frame.

Dorst's method rests on abduction: instead of deducing the solution from the problem (if X, then Y) or inducing the problem from the data, he proposes inventing a new “what”—a new way of seeing the situation that transforms an unsolvable problem into a solvable one.

“The King's Cross district in London had a problem of nighttime violence. The conventional frame was policing: more surveillance, more cameras, more presence. Dorst and his team reframed it: instead of seeing the area as a dangerous space needing control, they saw it as a stage needing a different audience. The solution was not more police but more nighttime cultural activity: events, markets, artistic lighting. By changing who occupies the space, they changed what happens in the space. The reframing did not solve the ‘security problem’—it dissolved it.”

5.3 A Reframing Protocol for Intention Architecture

Drawing on Schön-Rein and Dorst, we can construct a reframing protocol applicable to any formulation of a problem:

Step 1 — Make the current frame explicit: From what perspective is it formulated? What metaphors does it use? What reference point does it assume? Who is the principal actor? What is the timescale?

Step 2 — Identify what it excludes: Which actors are missing? Which causes are ignored? Which timescale is omitted? Which values are assumed without being declared?

Step 3 — Generate alternative frames: Change the actor (how does the client, the employee, the competitor, society see this?). Change the metaphor. Change the timescale. Change the causality (what if the cause is the opposite of what we assume?).

Step 4 — Evaluate each frame: Which solutions does each one make visible? Which data would each one require? Which seems most productive for this specific context?

Step 5 — Choose consciously: The point is not to find the “correct” frame (all are partial) but to choose the most useful one with full awareness of what it includes and excludes.

6. Frames in Communication and Persuasion

Robert Entman, a communication researcher, defined the media frame with a precision that holds for every context: to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, a causal interpretation, a moral evaluation, and a treatment recommendation.

Entman's definition is extraordinarily useful because it decomposes the frame into four specific functions that we can audit independently:

Problem definition: What is happening? Who is involved? The same event can be defined as a “crisis,” an “opportunity,” a “natural transition,” or a “management error.”

Causal interpretation: Why is it happening? Who or what caused it? This is where responsibility is assigned—to people, structures, circumstances, or luck.

Moral evaluation: Is this good or bad? For whom? Frames always carry an evaluative charge, even when they claim to be neutral.

Treatment recommendation: What should be done? This is the function that closes the circle: the frame does not merely describe the problem, it predetermines the “advisable” solution.

“A mass layoff at a technology company. Frame A: Definition → ‘strategic restructuring.’ Cause → ‘market conditions.’ Moral → ‘a difficult but necessary decision.’ Treatment → ‘optimize and move forward.’ Frame B: Definition → ‘a failure of leadership.’ Cause → ‘irresponsible overhiring.’ Moral → ‘employees pay for management's errors.’ Treatment → ‘replace the executive team and compensate those affected.’ Same facts, four framing functions inverted, two narratives and two completely different action plans.”

6.1 Frames and Ethics: The Line Between Formulating and Influencing

Entman's analysis reveals something this course will address in depth in Module VII (Persuasion and Cognitive Ethics): every frame has a persuasive component. Formulating a problem in a specific way is not a neutral act; it is an act that steers the conclusions. Whoever controls the frame controls, to a large degree, the decision.

For Intention Architecture, this raises a responsibility: when a system detects a frame and offers a reframing, it too is framing. The solution is not to pretend to neutrality—that is impossible—but transparency: making visible that what is being offered is a perspective, not the truth.

7. Practical Application: Frames in Action

7.1 Case Study: The Retention Problem That Wasn't About Retention

Mariana, VP of Human Resources at a 300-person company, asks an AI system: “We have a talent retention problem. Turnover on the engineering team is 25% a year. I need a retention plan with competitive benefits and better compensation.”

Let us analyze the frames present:

Narrow frame: It looks only at engineering. Is turnover in other departments similar? If so, the problem is not specific to engineering but organizational. If not, what is particular about engineering?

Symptom frame: The 25% turnover is a symptom. The causes could be compensation (as Mariana assumes), but also: poor leadership from the engineering director, lack of professional growth, an unsustainable technical codebase, a toxic team culture, or simply that engineers have abundant options in the market and any friction makes them move.

Solutionist frame: Mariana has already decided that the solution is “benefits and compensation.” But if the engineers are leaving because the engineering director is a bad leader, doubling salaries will not solve the problem—it will only postpone it (and make it more expensive).

Single-actor frame: The only actor is Mariana / the company. The engineers themselves are missing: what do they say in exit interviews? What do they post anonymously on Glassdoor? Where are they going—to another company, to freelancing, to a career change?

Implicit metaphor: “Retention”—the metaphor is physical: to retain, to hold, to keep something from escaping. This metaphor frames the employee as something that is “lost” and must be “grabbed.” An alternative metaphor—“attraction”—completely changes the optics: it is not about preventing people from leaving but about creating conditions that make them want to stay. “Retaining” is reactive; “attracting” is proactive.

“A system with intention architecture would respond: ‘Before designing a retention plan, I want to explore the frames in your formulation. First: is 25% turnover high compared with your industry? In technology, the average can run between 15% and 30%, so we need a reference point. Second: do you have data on why they leave—exit interviews, internal surveys? Compensation is a hypothesis, but it may not be the principal cause. Third: I notice you use the word retention. What if instead of thinking about retaining we thought about attracting—what would make your company the place where the best engineers want to be? That could open solutions that retention never contemplates.’”

7.2 Design Principles Derived from Framing Errors

1. Every frame is partial—make visible what it excludes. Before executing a request, identify what the user's frame leaves out and present it as an alternative.

2. Detect the metaphor and offer another. The user's metaphors reveal their deep frame. An alternative metaphor can dissolve problems that seemed intractable.

3. Ask about the reference point. When the user presents something as a “problem,” ask: compared with what? A different reference point can transform a problem into a strength.

4. Audit the four functions (Entman). Decompose the formulation into definition, cause, moral evaluation, and recommended treatment. Each function is an implicit decision that can be questioned.

5. Apply the reframing protocol to complex problems. Make explicit, identify exclusions, generate alternatives, evaluate, and choose consciously. Slowness is a virtue here.

6. Be transparent about your own frame. When you offer a reframing, make clear that it is an alternative perspective, not the truth. The objective is to widen the visual field, not to replace one dogma with another.

8. Glossary of Key Terms

9. Final Reflection and Self-Assessment

Before moving on to the next topic (Applied Logic and the Scientific Method), verify that you can apply the concepts of framing not as abstract theory but as a practical tool.

10. Bibliography and Recommended Readings

Essential Readings

• Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.

• Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1979). “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk.” Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.

• Dorst, K. (2015). Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. MIT Press.

Complementary Readings

• Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Harvard University Press.

• Schön, D. & Rein, M. (1994). Frame Reflection. Basic Books.

• Entman, R. (1993). “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.

• Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1981). “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice.” Science, 211(4481), 453–458.

• Lakoff, G. (2004). Don't Think of an Elephant! Chelsea Green Publishing.

Next Topic

The next and final book of Module II addresses Applied Logic and the Scientific Method: how to move from a correct formulation of the problem to valid reasoning about its solutions. You will study the rules of logical inference, the most common fallacies that corrode everyday reasoning, and how the scientific method provides a disciplined framework for advancing from problem to evidence. You will connect epistemology (Topic 1), problem formulation (Topic 2), and frame analysis (this topic) with the logical rigor that separates legitimate conclusions from those that merely look like it.