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Abstract Framing effects play a central role in the debate regarding human rationality. They violate the normative principle ofdescription invariance, which states that merely redescribing options or outcomes in equivalent ways should not affect judgments or decisions. Description invariance is considered by many decision researchers to be “normatively unassailable”, and violations are widely regarded as demonstrations of systematic irrationality. This article develops an alternative perspective on invariance violations, applying Funder’s (1987) distinction between “errors” and “mistakes”. Description invariance implicitly assumes that (1) rational preferences must be complete and (2) frames do not convey choice-relevant information. We argue that both assumptions often do not hold. When they fail, framing effects in the laboratory are not “errors”, and they do not provide evidence for “mistakes” in natural environments. Furthermore, recent findings suggest that participants often do not regard different responses to different frames as unreasonable, and presenting them with arguments for and against description invariance has little effect on their views. Finally, we argue that similar lessons generalize to other coherence norms, such as procedure invariance and independence of irrelevant alternatives. 

Human decisions are context dependent in ways that violate classical norms of rational choice. However, these norms implicitly depend on idealized descriptive assumptions that are often unrealistic. We focus on one such assumption: that information is constant across contexts. Choice contexts often supply subtle cues—which may be embedded in frames, procedures, or menus—to which human decision makers can be highly sensitive. We review recent evidence that some important context effects reflect dynamically coherent belief and preference updating, in response to ecologically valid cues. This evidence paints a more nuanced picture of human rationality in natural choice environments and opens up prospects for nonpaternalistic forms of choice architecture.