Evaluative Framing & Preference

A loose family of primes about how the frame of evaluation shapes judgment: joint versus separate evaluation and loss aversion as reference-dependent framing effects, other-regarding preferences and pivotality as accounting for others in one's own payoff, and virtue ethics as character-based evaluation.

5 primes in this family — primes that sit near one another in abstraction space (k-means over structural-signature embeddings). Each is shown with its short description.

• Joint vs. Separate Evaluation — The same option is ranked differently when evaluated alongside alternatives than when evaluated in isolation against an internal reference, because each evaluation mode makes a different subset of attributes evaluable and thus carries the verdict.
• Loss Aversion — Losses felt stronger than gains.
• Other-Regarding Preferences — An agent's evaluation of outcomes depends not only on its own payoff but on the payoffs of other agents.
• Pivotality — An element whose participation is necessary for a collective outcome owns the marginal contribution and acquires leverage beyond its nominal share.
• Virtue Ethics — Focus on character traits.