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Milhouse, the salesman: Frame Milhouse's decision. Provide an alternative frame for this situation and discuss how using the alternative frame could influence Milhouse's decision.

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You have recently been hired to a new organization and are sitting in to observe a meeting between one of your co-workers, Milhouse and a salesman who is trying to sell an additional part to a machine that your company recently purchased. The salesman is well into his routine, and has already gotten your co-worker to admit that a quality product is of utmost importance to the future of the company. The salesman approaches the topic of price with great skill. "Although this investment may seem substantial at first glance," he admits, "with our extended payment plan, this part will cost you less than 40 cents a day. Why, that's less than a can of soda! Wouldn't you say the future success of your organization is worth more than a daily can of soda?" Having never thought of it in just that way, Milhouse decides to purchase the part. (Adapted from: "Three Framed Victims", taken from Rhoades,K. Working Psychology, Retrieved at http://www.workingpsychology.com/index.html on July 15, 2003).

In order to prepare for future situations in which you have to make decisions such as these you go back to your office to evaluate the decision and in particular to do the following:

Frame Milhouse's decision.
Provide an alternative frame for this situation and discuss how using the alternative frame could influence Milhouse's decision.

What are the implications of framing on our judgments and our attempts to influence others? Are there any moral considerations? Why or why not? (

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"You need to come up with alternative frame for Milhouse now, shouldn't consider the value of can of soda anymore, but perhaps, the..."

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When you want to provide an alternative frame for the situation, you could read the part (from the website you gave) about O.J. Simpson first - as it mentioned, (quoted below)

"The initial question was framed as [O.J. innocent vs. O. J. guilty]. But both the prosecution and the defense immediately attempted to reframe the argument in terms of victimhood. The prosecution framed the trial as [wife-beater male vs. female victim], while the defense attempted to adopt the frame of [ethnic minority victim vs. racist police force]."

As you can see here, there were already 3 different frames with different approaches. (Those [bracketed]).

Then you should move on to read about the following part: (quoted for you as well)

"Finally, the young couple fell victim to the contrast frame. The salesman craftily shifted the focus of decision away from the amount the young family could afford to spend. Instead, he focused attention onto the mundaneness and unimportance of a can of soda. Using it as a reference point, he then compared it to the value of . . . not his encyclopedia set, but . . . successfully educated children. He substituted associations for the actual item. I think you will agree: given the frame [can of soda vs. children's education], ...

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