Framing Problems: How We Think Determines What We Think
Outrage over the loss of 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February led to student demands for laws to prevent mass shootings. President Trump announced his commitment, in a televised White House meeting, to universal background checks, raising the age for purchasing assault weapons to 21, and taking guns from those in danger of harming themselves or others.
Shortly thereafter, the White House announced "actions to secure our schools." The president stated that "[E]very child deserves to grow up in a safe community." The tough actions on gun sales and use he previously supported vanished. Rather, he focused on "hardening our schools" through encouraging states to train and arm selected school personnel and other efforts. These included incentivizing states to improve the current background check system, more attention to mental health, and a study commission chaired by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Lost amidst the reaction to the White House proposals, and the controversy over putting guns in the hands of school personnel, was the recognition of a significant shift in the post-Parkland conversation. Instead of talking about gun control, we ended up talking about school safety. While some are against the former, who can be against the latter? This may be why the STOP School Violence Act quickly passed the House 407-10. In psychological terms, this shift is called "reframing."
When an issue is reframed, it refocuses not only the conversation about a problem but the range of solutions considered. It alters the problem definition and limits what we see. Mass shootings also take place in churches, synagogues, night clubs, at music concerts, in business offices, at airports, in colleges, on inner city streets, in movie theaters, at gaming venues and in homes. But the conversation stopped focusing on those and confined itself to school safety. Universal background checks, raising the age to purchase assault weapons, or banning them or large capacity magazines dropped from the conversation.
This is not to say that the White House proposals and the House bill lacked merit. There was reason to be grateful for the measures considered earlier this year, though the House bill never got a vote in the Senate. It is to suggest that reframing is a tool that, often subtly (and perhaps sometimes deliberately), guides thinking, limits options, and can stall action. It suggests that by accepting the reframing of a problem, we cede significant control over it to those who have done the reframing.
Reframing takes place in all kinds of settings, not just in politics. Sometimes it can be a productive way to see a problem in a new way, such as reframing the opioid crisis from "drug addiction" to "over-prescription of pain medication." The former leads us to consider only law enforcement and treatment. The latter leads to consideration of whether physicians and pharmaceutical firms who supply drugs are part of the problem. Reframing is common in polling, where questions are often written to lead to or away from replies the poll's sponsor desires or does not want. When you see an advertisement for a weight loss pill, you are witnessing reframing from how a healthier lifestyle might avoid your problem to how you can purchase a pill to do the same thing.
One of the best ways to avoid being caught in a reframing trap is to refuse to limit yourself to just one way of seeing a situation. Always ask: how else could I frame this problem? Related questions that can be helpful include: how are others, especially those I disagree with, framing this issue? who stands to gain from framing the problem this way? what options does this way of framing the problem eliminate or ignore? What options might another way of framing the situation open?
It's important to note that most complex problems can only be addressed through the insights and action possibilities that come from multiple frames. Reducing domestic violence, for example, requires seeing the problem from at least such frames as mental health, law enforcement, abused-spouse support services, parental and early childhood education (many abusers came from homes where abuse was prevalent), and criminal justice.
As the case of the Parkland mass shooting demonstrates, seeing things from a single frame is not enough. Just over a week ago, President Trump's initial response to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh was to suggest that armed guards in the synagogue were needed. Hardening soft targets is again just one frame. We do a disservice to those who lost their lives - and those who have lost loved ones to gun violence - when we accept simple frames for complex problems. The victims deserve more from those of us who are still here to think about the issue.
Photo Credit: Carol Donsky Newell
