Sacred vs PseudoSacred Values How People Cope with

Sacred vs. Pseudo-Sacred Values: How People Cope with Taboo Trade-Offs Philip Tetlock University of Pennsylvania Barbara Mellers University of Pennsylvania Peter Scoblic Harvard University 1

What Are Sacred Values? • Durkheim’s solution to the Hobbesian riddle “how is social order possible? ” – Cohesive communities need to pretend convincingly that some values are beyond tradeoffs (infinitely important) – Research shows apparently extreme trade-off aversion for “sacred” values 2

Gift-Exchange Studies • Gift-exchange studies swell endowment effect WTA/WTP ratios from 2: 1 to 10: 1, with 50% refusal to answer • Basic paradigm: Ask people how much they’d be willing to sell a gift received from a loved one vs. how much they’d be willing to pay to purchase same gift

Mc. Graw and Tetlock (2003)

What Are Pseudo-Sacred Values? • Skeptics note most research relies on cheaptalk dependent variables (with big exception of work on terrorism) • Failures to “pretend convincingly” are inevitable in a world of scarce resources • Sacred values are transparent fictions that virtually everyone sees through

Messy Compromise Position: People as Semi-Hypocrites • Combination of wide symbolic deference to sacred values and pockets of cynicism sets stage for games among different types of agents • Those taken in by the pretense are vulnerable to rhetorical predators – Gotcha games salespeople play in jewelry stores, funeral homes, … – Gotcha games politicians play (“Third Rail topics”)

Consumer Gotcha Games • Less willing to negotiate for lower prices for sacred occasions, like caskets for funerals and rings for weddings • Less search along price dimension and more along quality dimension • Effects vanish for non-sacred occasions (Mc. Graw, Davis, Scott & Tetlock, 2016)

Taboo Trade-Offs as Source of Profit

Political Gotcha Games • Dust off accusations from 20 years ago: selling access to the Lincoln Bedroom to big donors • Defenders replied: We weren’t selling anything. Friends do favors for friends

The Lincoln-Bedroom Problem (1996) Relational Framing (Equality Marching vs. Market Norms) Influences Moral Outrage, Especially Among Democrats in this Case 10

WHAT NEXT? • Skeptics point to porousness of sacred-value norms and ask: When will Durkheimians give up an expensive pretense? • Durkheimians ask: When will utilitarians accept the deep need to sanctify social life? – Homo sociologicus loses many battles to homo economicus but never surrenders—or loses its capacity to distort consumer choices and political debates