The framing heuristic influences judgements about younger and older adults' decision to refuse medical treatment.

Three-hundred and one young adults evaluated medical dilemmas in which a patient (1) was portrayed as either 40 or 70 years old, (2) decided to either refuse or consent to a risky treatment for a serious medical disorder, and (3) received either positively or negatively framed information about the potential effectiveness of a proposed medical treatment. Participants' evaluations of the patients' decisions reflected the implementation of a framing heuristic and an age heuristic. The framing heuristic influenced participants' judgements of patients who refused the proposed treatment. Specifically, information which was positively framed resulted in risk-avoiding judgements, while information which was negatively framed resulted in risk-taking judgements. The age heuristic predisposed participants to recommend that 40 year old patients, more so than 70-year-old patients, opt for high-risk medical treatments that could potentially add a large number of years to their lives.